I’ve got a machine in (with an AMD 1+ Gb CPU, 512Mb RAM etc running Win XP Pro & Linspire 5.0 Linux OS) with two separate and independently booted hard drives. Drive 1 (normally ‘C’) is 40Gb., Drive 2(designated ‘F’ by Windows) is 80Gb.
It originally had Win XP running on a single HDD (C). A second HDD was installed (F – automatically designated by XP). Windows XP was reinstalled on this new (80Gb)HDD and all the data from the original HDD was transferred to the new one, everything worked fine, with XP now booting on the new (F) drive. The original HDD was then reformatted. The Linux Distribution mentioned above was installed on the original HDD – no problems, the Linux OS works fine, it also detects the Windows files on the ‘second’ drive when you ‘explore’ in it’s ‘File Manager’ (equivalent to Win Explorer). With Linux you have a very courteous boot utility (if during original installation it picks up any other bootable software on other drives or partitions – Win or OS X for example). After installation, and everytime you do a cold boot it gives you a time lag during which it displays all the available bootable OSs in the boot window. If no choice is made it then happily boots as normal to the drive it is installed on.
When a boot into Win XP is selected everything goes fine – until you get past the ‘logon’ window. It then slows to a crawl and eventually displays an error message (please browse these URLs to view screenshots:http://www.sccambria.idps.co.uk/pics/error_screenshot.jpg http://www.sccambria.idps.co.uk/pics/error_sig_screenshot1.jpg http://www.sccambria.idps.co.uk/pics/error_sig_screenshot2.jpg ). Eventually – after what seems like an age, especially if you’re in a hurry – the ‘Desktop’ appears and then it works as normal, at normal access speeds etc. However if ‘My Computer’ is selected (or Windows Explorer is deployed to view the drives) it again stops dead for about 3 minutes or more & then displays the Windows error message. The other times it does that is if the right (‘command’) button is pressed on the mouse – for ‘send to’ commands for burning data to a CDR and the like. That’s bad enough and extremely infuriating, but worse is to follow!
If CuteFTP is launched to upload files to a server it goes ballistic. Cute keeps on coming up with a strange message that I’ve never seen before (please browse to this URL to view a screenshot: http://www.sccambria.idps.co.uk/pics/cuteFTP_error_screenshot.jpg ). You’ll notice from this message that you are given two options ‘Switch to…’ or ‘Retry’. If the first is selected the ‘Win Start’ menu opens up, if the second is selected the CuteFTP error window disappears but the ‘Generic Processes…’ error message pops back up. This situation yo-yos depending on which command you select until it suddenly comes to it’s senses and starts working. The whole process starts again every time you try to select a different directory to change files, either on the client side or the host side of the FTP control panel.
I should mention that the first drive (originally ‘C’ which is now home to the Linux OS is not detected at all in Win XP. It only shows all the detachable drives (DVD-ROM etc.) and it’s own drive shown as ‘F’. As you probably know the A, B, C,…. drive designation is purely a Microsoft method of displaying HDDs. Linux designates the terms ‘HD1a’ & ‘HD1b’.
I’ve exhausted my resources – it’s “HELP” time!
Many Thanks,
Gwilym.