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#31
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Juggling partions?
"Jim" wrote in message news:kg6bc.4565$zh.1526@fed1read07... Ok, let's backtrack a second here. In your initial post, you indicated a desire to boot both WinMe and WinXP, correct? That means dual-booting is the problem/issue. So when you say "Where did I say I wanted to use ANY boot manager", you're absolutely right, you didn't say that, and THAT'S the problem. You are essentially trying to dual-boot WITHOUT a boot manager! Instead, you're mucking w/ PM and trying to fanagle everything MANUALLY. Even assuming you can do it (and for reasons I won't elaborate here, it's mighty tricky unless you understand all the issues), its not necessary nor a good idea. You're encountering many of your current problems ONLY because you insist on avoiding a boot manager. Your statement: "Is there any way I can repair these installations so both installs will work? Yeah, install a boot manager! Ok... What I want is... My PC to *ALWAYS* boot to Windows XP and NEVER show any kind of boot manager... UNLESS I set the Win ME partition active. At that point I want it to boot ME and ONLY ME until which time I set the XP partition active again. When a user is on this PC I don't want them to know that the other OS is installed and I don't want them choosing the other OS during boot. But you resist the boot manager, in fact, you specifically insist you never indicated a desire to use a boot manager. Well, what can I say, you want to dual boot, a boot manager is specifically designed to avoid the problems you're currently having, so someone (me) suggests a boot manager, and you say "I don't want a boot manager", then you list several problems that are directly related to not using a boot manager, then wonder why people are suggesting you use a boot manager! And around and around we go. The *ONLY* reason I need a boot manager is that Win XP won't keep it's grubby fingers to itself. It should have no need to touch any other partition except its own. If it isn't on the active partition it should be be booting so why would it need to do anything with the rest of the drive? I could live with the default XP boot loader if I had some way of editing BOOT.INI from WinME, but I don't since XP is on an NTFS drive. Why aren't the BOOT.INI options stored on the boot sector with the rest of the boot loader? As far as using the XP boot loader (it's not really a boot "manager", that's an overstatement), yes, this is an option for managing the dual boot. BUT, you also indicated in a follow-up post the following: "I wanted to avoid the XP and ME installations having anything to do with each other." Well, that's another problem. When you use the XP loader, it will dual-boot both OSs, BUT, they will NOT be independent of each other! Let's step thru the process. Assume WinME is on partition #1 as C:. You now what to install XP on partition #2. Because the XP loader cannot hide partitions, the WinME partition will always be exposed when XP boots. This is why the XP installation will be booted as D:! *sigh* The XP installation is *NOT* seen as D: When I boot into XP I get a single hard drive with letter C:. XP works fine and operates normally. I go into My Computer and I see only one drive. If I go into Disk Manager I see Disk 0 with the Win ME partition there at 1.96GB and Fat32 marked as Healthy (Unknown Partition). Right next to this I see (C at 25.96 gigs and NTFS. It's marked Healthy (System). This is exactly what I would expect to see with my current setup. PLEASE STOP TELLING ME MY LETTERS ARE GETTING MIXED UP. The XP partition will still see C: (WinME), albeit as data. If we also assume the XP installation is FAT32 (and I believe WinME sees FAT32 partitions), when WinME boots, it will see the XP partition as D: (again, as data). IOW, the partitions are NOT hidden from each other. See above In fact, the dependencies are much worse than cosmetic. The XP installation will install all the boot files in C:'s partition! So now, if you need/want to delete the C: partition some time in the future, you're in a mess. XP needs C: to be there for its boot files *and* to make sure that the XP partition remains D:. You can't move the XP partition too easily either, since it's boot files specifically point to that partition, and moving it may alter its drive letter assignment (such assignments are determined, by default, by the BIOS). Drive letters are not assigned by the BIOS at all. BIOS can determine the order than hard drives are detected and that will affect drive lettering though. Active primary partitions on all drivers are given letters before any logical drives. Primary partitions that are not marked active don't get drive letters at all. Since I only have one drive this whole point is moot. I know it's all rather complicated, but the point is, dual-booting either manually or using the XP boot loader is in direct conflict with your stated objectives. Yes, the XP loader is FREE, but it's severely limited too. I'm suggesting BootIt NG, Boot Magic, heck, even the free XOSL boot manager, are MUCH better alternatives based on your stated objectives. You can NOT have total partition/OS independence using the XP boot loader. You *may* be able to achieve this manually using PM, but it's very tricky and takes a deep understanding of what a boot manager does in order to prevent an even bigger mess. To get back to BootIt NG, I suggested a third partition, again, to maintain your stated desire to keep these OS partitions independent. Now, to be honest, you can certainly install it (or any other boot manager) into an existing partition if you like. I don't recommend it, but you can. But if you create a small third partition ONLY for the boot manager, you won't have any boot manager dependencies associated with your OS partitions either. For example, if you install BootIt NG (or any other boot manager) into the first partition, w/ WinME, it will work fine. BUT, you know have to be careful not to move, delete, or alter the first partition, lest you risk mucking up the boot manager! In fact, all the boot manager files/folders will be EXPOSED whenever the C: partition is visible (which without a boot manager is ALWAYS). Why take that risk? Why introduce that dependency too when you don't have to? Instead, keep the boot manager in its own partition (you have a maximum of four primaries anyway, and currently are using only two). But again, if you want to use an existing partition for the boot manager, go ahead, be my guest. Do you even know how disk partitioning works? You can only have one active primary partition. The other primary partitions (up to three) are not seen by the OS. snip Anyway, that's my last word on the subject, if you don't feel that 12+ years of experience has much to offer, what can I say, keep rolling that snowball uphill, maybe you know something I don't, I gave it my best shot. Good luck, god bless, and have a happy life. Only 12 years? Still a newbie? : ) I've dealt with CP/M, Windows 286, TRSDOS...etc... I've was burning Eproms for projects on Commodore PETs before IBM even had a personal computer. Anyhow... I didn't come here for a shouting match. I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ....so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. I also am not going to touch this thread again once I'm finished with the rest of the posts today. |
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#32
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Juggling partions?
snip
I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ...so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. *SIGH* ....and after all this... I just used PM8 to set the ME partition active and rebooted to get the actually error from when it failed.... ME came up fine. So my whole issue was that the ME version of FDisk wasn't setting the active partition in a way that would work with XP on the drive. PM8 can do it fine and that's all I need. Both OS's are installed and are completely independant of each other and both run as C:. |
#33
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Juggling partions?
"Ron Sommer" wrote in message ... Jim, I put your post in my keep folder. It seems to me that Noozer is wanting to use fdisk as a "boot manager". Exactly. I'll be lucky if I need to boot ME more than three times a year. It's a fallback partition in case I need to test something under this old OS. I just wanted to get my ME partition back without losing it. I know how to dual boot in XP and was trying to avoid that. |
#34
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Juggling partions?
"Jim" wrote in message news:kg6bc.4565$zh.1526@fed1read07... Ok, let's backtrack a second here. In your initial post, you indicated a desire to boot both WinMe and WinXP, correct? That means dual-booting is the problem/issue. So when you say "Where did I say I wanted to use ANY boot manager", you're absolutely right, you didn't say that, and THAT'S the problem. You are essentially trying to dual-boot WITHOUT a boot manager! Instead, you're mucking w/ PM and trying to fanagle everything MANUALLY. Even assuming you can do it (and for reasons I won't elaborate here, it's mighty tricky unless you understand all the issues), its not necessary nor a good idea. You're encountering many of your current problems ONLY because you insist on avoiding a boot manager. Your statement: "Is there any way I can repair these installations so both installs will work? Yeah, install a boot manager! Ok... What I want is... My PC to *ALWAYS* boot to Windows XP and NEVER show any kind of boot manager... UNLESS I set the Win ME partition active. At that point I want it to boot ME and ONLY ME until which time I set the XP partition active again. When a user is on this PC I don't want them to know that the other OS is installed and I don't want them choosing the other OS during boot. But you resist the boot manager, in fact, you specifically insist you never indicated a desire to use a boot manager. Well, what can I say, you want to dual boot, a boot manager is specifically designed to avoid the problems you're currently having, so someone (me) suggests a boot manager, and you say "I don't want a boot manager", then you list several problems that are directly related to not using a boot manager, then wonder why people are suggesting you use a boot manager! And around and around we go. The *ONLY* reason I need a boot manager is that Win XP won't keep it's grubby fingers to itself. It should have no need to touch any other partition except its own. If it isn't on the active partition it should be be booting so why would it need to do anything with the rest of the drive? I could live with the default XP boot loader if I had some way of editing BOOT.INI from WinME, but I don't since XP is on an NTFS drive. Why aren't the BOOT.INI options stored on the boot sector with the rest of the boot loader? As far as using the XP boot loader (it's not really a boot "manager", that's an overstatement), yes, this is an option for managing the dual boot. BUT, you also indicated in a follow-up post the following: "I wanted to avoid the XP and ME installations having anything to do with each other." Well, that's another problem. When you use the XP loader, it will dual-boot both OSs, BUT, they will NOT be independent of each other! Let's step thru the process. Assume WinME is on partition #1 as C:. You now what to install XP on partition #2. Because the XP loader cannot hide partitions, the WinME partition will always be exposed when XP boots. This is why the XP installation will be booted as D:! *sigh* The XP installation is *NOT* seen as D: When I boot into XP I get a single hard drive with letter C:. XP works fine and operates normally. I go into My Computer and I see only one drive. If I go into Disk Manager I see Disk 0 with the Win ME partition there at 1.96GB and Fat32 marked as Healthy (Unknown Partition). Right next to this I see (C at 25.96 gigs and NTFS. It's marked Healthy (System). This is exactly what I would expect to see with my current setup. PLEASE STOP TELLING ME MY LETTERS ARE GETTING MIXED UP. The XP partition will still see C: (WinME), albeit as data. If we also assume the XP installation is FAT32 (and I believe WinME sees FAT32 partitions), when WinME boots, it will see the XP partition as D: (again, as data). IOW, the partitions are NOT hidden from each other. See above In fact, the dependencies are much worse than cosmetic. The XP installation will install all the boot files in C:'s partition! So now, if you need/want to delete the C: partition some time in the future, you're in a mess. XP needs C: to be there for its boot files *and* to make sure that the XP partition remains D:. You can't move the XP partition too easily either, since it's boot files specifically point to that partition, and moving it may alter its drive letter assignment (such assignments are determined, by default, by the BIOS). Drive letters are not assigned by the BIOS at all. BIOS can determine the order than hard drives are detected and that will affect drive lettering though. Active primary partitions on all drivers are given letters before any logical drives. Primary partitions that are not marked active don't get drive letters at all. Since I only have one drive this whole point is moot. I know it's all rather complicated, but the point is, dual-booting either manually or using the XP boot loader is in direct conflict with your stated objectives. Yes, the XP loader is FREE, but it's severely limited too. I'm suggesting BootIt NG, Boot Magic, heck, even the free XOSL boot manager, are MUCH better alternatives based on your stated objectives. You can NOT have total partition/OS independence using the XP boot loader. You *may* be able to achieve this manually using PM, but it's very tricky and takes a deep understanding of what a boot manager does in order to prevent an even bigger mess. To get back to BootIt NG, I suggested a third partition, again, to maintain your stated desire to keep these OS partitions independent. Now, to be honest, you can certainly install it (or any other boot manager) into an existing partition if you like. I don't recommend it, but you can. But if you create a small third partition ONLY for the boot manager, you won't have any boot manager dependencies associated with your OS partitions either. For example, if you install BootIt NG (or any other boot manager) into the first partition, w/ WinME, it will work fine. BUT, you know have to be careful not to move, delete, or alter the first partition, lest you risk mucking up the boot manager! In fact, all the boot manager files/folders will be EXPOSED whenever the C: partition is visible (which without a boot manager is ALWAYS). Why take that risk? Why introduce that dependency too when you don't have to? Instead, keep the boot manager in its own partition (you have a maximum of four primaries anyway, and currently are using only two). But again, if you want to use an existing partition for the boot manager, go ahead, be my guest. Do you even know how disk partitioning works? You can only have one active primary partition. The other primary partitions (up to three) are not seen by the OS. snip Anyway, that's my last word on the subject, if you don't feel that 12+ years of experience has much to offer, what can I say, keep rolling that snowball uphill, maybe you know something I don't, I gave it my best shot. Good luck, god bless, and have a happy life. Only 12 years? Still a newbie? : ) I've dealt with CP/M, Windows 286, TRSDOS...etc... I've was burning Eproms for projects on Commodore PETs before IBM even had a personal computer. Anyhow... I didn't come here for a shouting match. I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ....so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. I also am not going to touch this thread again once I'm finished with the rest of the posts today. |
#35
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Juggling partions?
snip
I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ...so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. *SIGH* ....and after all this... I just used PM8 to set the ME partition active and rebooted to get the actually error from when it failed.... ME came up fine. So my whole issue was that the ME version of FDisk wasn't setting the active partition in a way that would work with XP on the drive. PM8 can do it fine and that's all I need. Both OS's are installed and are completely independant of each other and both run as C:. |
#36
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Juggling partions?
"Ron Sommer" wrote in message ... Jim, I put your post in my keep folder. It seems to me that Noozer is wanting to use fdisk as a "boot manager". Exactly. I'll be lucky if I need to boot ME more than three times a year. It's a fallback partition in case I need to test something under this old OS. I just wanted to get my ME partition back without losing it. I know how to dual boot in XP and was trying to avoid that. |
#37
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Juggling partions?
"Jim" wrote in message news:kg6bc.4565$zh.1526@fed1read07... Ok, let's backtrack a second here. In your initial post, you indicated a desire to boot both WinMe and WinXP, correct? That means dual-booting is the problem/issue. So when you say "Where did I say I wanted to use ANY boot manager", you're absolutely right, you didn't say that, and THAT'S the problem. You are essentially trying to dual-boot WITHOUT a boot manager! Instead, you're mucking w/ PM and trying to fanagle everything MANUALLY. Even assuming you can do it (and for reasons I won't elaborate here, it's mighty tricky unless you understand all the issues), its not necessary nor a good idea. You're encountering many of your current problems ONLY because you insist on avoiding a boot manager. Your statement: "Is there any way I can repair these installations so both installs will work? Yeah, install a boot manager! Ok... What I want is... My PC to *ALWAYS* boot to Windows XP and NEVER show any kind of boot manager... UNLESS I set the Win ME partition active. At that point I want it to boot ME and ONLY ME until which time I set the XP partition active again. When a user is on this PC I don't want them to know that the other OS is installed and I don't want them choosing the other OS during boot. But you resist the boot manager, in fact, you specifically insist you never indicated a desire to use a boot manager. Well, what can I say, you want to dual boot, a boot manager is specifically designed to avoid the problems you're currently having, so someone (me) suggests a boot manager, and you say "I don't want a boot manager", then you list several problems that are directly related to not using a boot manager, then wonder why people are suggesting you use a boot manager! And around and around we go. The *ONLY* reason I need a boot manager is that Win XP won't keep it's grubby fingers to itself. It should have no need to touch any other partition except its own. If it isn't on the active partition it should be be booting so why would it need to do anything with the rest of the drive? I could live with the default XP boot loader if I had some way of editing BOOT.INI from WinME, but I don't since XP is on an NTFS drive. Why aren't the BOOT.INI options stored on the boot sector with the rest of the boot loader? As far as using the XP boot loader (it's not really a boot "manager", that's an overstatement), yes, this is an option for managing the dual boot. BUT, you also indicated in a follow-up post the following: "I wanted to avoid the XP and ME installations having anything to do with each other." Well, that's another problem. When you use the XP loader, it will dual-boot both OSs, BUT, they will NOT be independent of each other! Let's step thru the process. Assume WinME is on partition #1 as C:. You now what to install XP on partition #2. Because the XP loader cannot hide partitions, the WinME partition will always be exposed when XP boots. This is why the XP installation will be booted as D:! *sigh* The XP installation is *NOT* seen as D: When I boot into XP I get a single hard drive with letter C:. XP works fine and operates normally. I go into My Computer and I see only one drive. If I go into Disk Manager I see Disk 0 with the Win ME partition there at 1.96GB and Fat32 marked as Healthy (Unknown Partition). Right next to this I see (C at 25.96 gigs and NTFS. It's marked Healthy (System). This is exactly what I would expect to see with my current setup. PLEASE STOP TELLING ME MY LETTERS ARE GETTING MIXED UP. The XP partition will still see C: (WinME), albeit as data. If we also assume the XP installation is FAT32 (and I believe WinME sees FAT32 partitions), when WinME boots, it will see the XP partition as D: (again, as data). IOW, the partitions are NOT hidden from each other. See above In fact, the dependencies are much worse than cosmetic. The XP installation will install all the boot files in C:'s partition! So now, if you need/want to delete the C: partition some time in the future, you're in a mess. XP needs C: to be there for its boot files *and* to make sure that the XP partition remains D:. You can't move the XP partition too easily either, since it's boot files specifically point to that partition, and moving it may alter its drive letter assignment (such assignments are determined, by default, by the BIOS). Drive letters are not assigned by the BIOS at all. BIOS can determine the order than hard drives are detected and that will affect drive lettering though. Active primary partitions on all drivers are given letters before any logical drives. Primary partitions that are not marked active don't get drive letters at all. Since I only have one drive this whole point is moot. I know it's all rather complicated, but the point is, dual-booting either manually or using the XP boot loader is in direct conflict with your stated objectives. Yes, the XP loader is FREE, but it's severely limited too. I'm suggesting BootIt NG, Boot Magic, heck, even the free XOSL boot manager, are MUCH better alternatives based on your stated objectives. You can NOT have total partition/OS independence using the XP boot loader. You *may* be able to achieve this manually using PM, but it's very tricky and takes a deep understanding of what a boot manager does in order to prevent an even bigger mess. To get back to BootIt NG, I suggested a third partition, again, to maintain your stated desire to keep these OS partitions independent. Now, to be honest, you can certainly install it (or any other boot manager) into an existing partition if you like. I don't recommend it, but you can. But if you create a small third partition ONLY for the boot manager, you won't have any boot manager dependencies associated with your OS partitions either. For example, if you install BootIt NG (or any other boot manager) into the first partition, w/ WinME, it will work fine. BUT, you know have to be careful not to move, delete, or alter the first partition, lest you risk mucking up the boot manager! In fact, all the boot manager files/folders will be EXPOSED whenever the C: partition is visible (which without a boot manager is ALWAYS). Why take that risk? Why introduce that dependency too when you don't have to? Instead, keep the boot manager in its own partition (you have a maximum of four primaries anyway, and currently are using only two). But again, if you want to use an existing partition for the boot manager, go ahead, be my guest. Do you even know how disk partitioning works? You can only have one active primary partition. The other primary partitions (up to three) are not seen by the OS. snip Anyway, that's my last word on the subject, if you don't feel that 12+ years of experience has much to offer, what can I say, keep rolling that snowball uphill, maybe you know something I don't, I gave it my best shot. Good luck, god bless, and have a happy life. Only 12 years? Still a newbie? : ) I've dealt with CP/M, Windows 286, TRSDOS...etc... I've was burning Eproms for projects on Commodore PETs before IBM even had a personal computer. Anyhow... I didn't come here for a shouting match. I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ....so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. I also am not going to touch this thread again once I'm finished with the rest of the posts today. |
#38
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Juggling partions?
snip
I'm used to "whatever primary is set active will boot"... That's what I expected when I did my install. XP (and 2K and I assume NT) stomped on the drives boot record. I didn't expect XP to touch any partition info except the partition it was being installed on. The last time I had to deal with this issue was during my OS/2 Warp days. ...so XP can't boot unless it had control of the drive, regardless of whatever partitions and OS's are on the drive. I'll convert ME to a logical partition and edit the XP Boot INI and HOPEFULLY be able to switch between the two. *SIGH* ....and after all this... I just used PM8 to set the ME partition active and rebooted to get the actually error from when it failed.... ME came up fine. So my whole issue was that the ME version of FDisk wasn't setting the active partition in a way that would work with XP on the drive. PM8 can do it fine and that's all I need. Both OS's are installed and are completely independant of each other and both run as C:. |
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