Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Dual Boot: 2kPro + XP Pro

0 helpful
2 replies

by muddyknees 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I have one drive divided in 3 partitions - 2 primary and one logical (for data). I then installed Win2k Pro in the primary partition [C:]. After installing SP3 and drivers in Win2k, I went on to install WinXP Pro with SP1 in the other primary partition (strangely tagged [E:]). XPPro Setup recognized my existing Win2k installation and went on. As soon as the XP installation was done, I tried rebooting to check if the Win2k installation could boot. I chose Win2k from the boot options menu and was met with nothing (no display or response whatsoever). I have duplicated this problem twice. There is nothing wrong with my boot.ini. I have tried fixing Win2k using recovery console and automatic recovery, but I end up having Win2k working and the XP option in the 2k (replaced XP) boot menu pointing to Win2k as well. In a way, I just reversed the problem. I hope someone out there could help me. This is getting really frustrating.

2 replies

by absolutely

I'm not 100% certain (ironic, I know!), but I believe that Windows requires separate physical disks to dual-boot with other Windows NT versions because of ntldr. As I recall, that or something else crucial to the boot process is always written to the boot sector of the physical disk, hence you can only boot one or the other, although you have a "boot manager" showing you options that it really cannot offer you.

I do know that normal Windows (2000 & XP at least) behavior is to define a C: drive as you would expect, then assign D: to the first optical drive it finds, regardless of IDE channel, master/slave or cable select, and then the next HDD partition is called E:, at least during installation.

by dmiles

W2K sould be on the primary partition,donot put both on primary

Dual Boot Windows 2000 and Windows 9x: Here's the way to do it, and what not to do. The information below is for adding Windows 2000 to a system that already has Windows 95/98. This works with the following versions of Windows 2000: Professional Server Advanced Server Keep in mind: Windows 95/98 cannot view data on drives/partitions formatted at NTFS - it can't even actually see these drives/partitions.

Steps for setting up dual-boot: Install Windows 2000 will start to install, copying tons of files to the disk, then will require a reboot. In the second phase of the installation, Windows 2000 will display your drives and partitions.

It will ask which partition you want Windows 2000 installed upon.

Windows 2000 will automatically set up a dual-boot menu. Once completed, upon booting the system you'll see a menu that has entries similar to this: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Microsoft Windows A countdown timer will start, and automatically boot into the first option in 30 seconds unless a key is pressed. Select the option you want and press enter.

To change which option is booted by default, boot into Windows 2000, right-click on My Computer and select Properties. One of the tabs is "Advanced". From that tab, click the button marked "Startup and Recovery". From there you can select which item is booted by default, and how long the default countdown time is set at. Other Notes about Dual-Booting Windows 9x needs to boot from a drive it can read; thus, you can't make your active partition (the partition the computer tries to first boot from, usually the C: drive) NTFS. If you have multiple hard drives, you can set up dual-boot so that one operating system is on one drive, and the other on the second hard drive. They are really just seen as different partitions.

This discussion is closed to new replies.