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I just had one of those long processes where I made every mistake possible trying to dual boot my system with win xp on separate partitions on the same drive.

I had a bad experience trying to use boot magic. While partition magic is a great program, and boot magic would be fine with XP and Linux or XP and 98, it didn't work well with 2 vers. of XP.

The setup that worked best was using the multi-boot program included in XP, which will detect multiple Windows OS, and give you a choice when you re-boot. (you will need a seperate multi-boot program to use Linux.)

The steps starting with blank formatted HD:

1. use the Win XP startup CD to partition your drive.

2. load XP on primary C: drive

3. after XP os #1 is working, reboot and use fdisk to set the other partition active.

4. reboot with XP startup disk and load Win XP to this drive. (you may at this point have trouble re-booting back to the second partition during the remainder of win XP setup. Double check that it remains the active drive. I still couldn't boot to the second disk at this point. However, when I changed active drive back to the primary C: partition, the XP multi-boot program kicked in and allowed me to select the second os to finish the install.)

I had bad luck using a third party product to partition and format the partitions. I think if you let XP do it, there is better chance of Windows automatically assigning the right drive letters to each OS.

Using this method, I avoided having to slog through boot.ini tweaks and other error messages and missing files that appeared when trying to use Boot magic and Partition Magic for the job...

Multi-booting is a must if you want to use your machine for Office and photo-editing, etc. without sacrificing stability with the music DAW.

If anyone else has multi-boot tips, I thought it would be nice to have a thread tackling this subject to save future multi-booters as many headaches and as much time as possible!

-Mythlalethe

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mythalethe on 2003-01-21 16:41 ]</font>

dual booting two XP partitions is a real pain. To be honest you dont need them at all. What's the point of maintaining two xp partitions, it's a waste of time and space. Lots of people run their audio apps on the same computer/hdd as their office/internet/image apps. The performance hit is minimal. Just make sure you effectively partition ya hdds.

alternatively, get a seperate HDD, 2nd hand drives are piss cheap - say 20gigs or so and buy the IDE removable kit (purchase an extra caddy for ya office apps drive). If you need use ya office/photo apps then shutdown, remove the DAW HDD and replace it with the office apps hdd. bootup.

my 0.000002 cents

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: soul-synthesis on 2003-01-21 19:27 ]</font>

whether you need a seperate OS definately depends on your uses/needs. I have found it is definately worth it, but it is not for everyone. The ideal solution would be an extra box just for DAW...

one thing I forgot to mention, if you have ever loaded an OS on your HD before, it is important to delete ALL partitions in the win XP setup and recreate them again before loading the first OS back on the HD. Apparently there are files related to OS loading or something that are not erased with a basic format. Deleting all the partitions and then recreating them before formating will fix this...

cheers,

-Mythalethe

Many Thanx Mythalethe,
Good to know as I am about to attempt a dual boot system. I get frequent startup probs with my audio gear having everything on one OS. atOmic gave me a good run down http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=1&15 , so if you have any further contributions they would be very welcome.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Richmo on 2003-06-05 10:04 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Richmo on 2003-06-05 10:07 ]</font>

I don't have XP but 98 SE. Here I copyed the freshly installed OS 1 to another primary partition by making an image. After that I installed a boot manager. Works fine here. Think XP will be the same.

Will I have problems at bootup if I'm using W98 SE with XP pro upgrade? I mean I'll be installing 98 first then rebooting then installing XP Pro. Also if Drive C is FAT32, does the 2nd HDD have to be formatted as FAT 32 as well??
Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

No problem. 98 first in FAT32, then XP in NTFS. Remember: Explorer in 98 cannot "see" any NTFS. So have a common drive with FAT32.

from what I have heard from researching this online, it is easier to get 98 and XP to co-exist than to have 2 versions of XP. I think this has to do with the way XP makes use of the master boot record or something...

-mythalethe

On 2003-06-06 05:04, Micha wrote:
No problem. 98 first in FAT32, then XP in NTFS. Remember: Explorer in 98 cannot "see" any NTFS. So have a common drive with FAT32.

If I already have Drive C with 98 and XP ugrade, would this be the 'common drive', and do I actually have to reinstall 98 to my 2nd HDD or can I just put XP on it? Or would this defeat the object of having a separate OS for audio only?

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Richmo on 2003-06-07 08:35 ]</font>

you will ideally have one HD with 2 partitions, each containing an OS. Then you can use the second HD for recording and data archiving. I partition my second HD to make defragging faster on the partition I use for recording.

-mythalethe

Hi,
It's all done, and working . I have HDD 1, 'C' (system), with original XP pro, no partitions on this disk. Then I have HDD 2 with partitions so:-
'D'= XP pro 2, all audio programs (this turned out to be the boot disk)
'E' remains Virtual RAM
'F' storage area for all audio files.
Only one minor prob, that is my home network only works through XP 2. I'll work on this, but for now all is well. Also my system disk ('C')is running in PIO mode. Any thoughts??
Many thanx.

My only suggestion is that you record to the HD that is not running the music ap-OS. This is the main advantage of having a 2 HD system.

If you upgrade from 98 SE to XP, you want to do a fresh install to get the most out of XP. I used Partition Magic 8 to create 2 new partitions, I kept 98 SE as is (P2, Nuendo 1.6, Gigastudio), then XP with all the bells and whistles, (incl. networking, printer, business apps etc.) for internet use. Then XP stripped for audio (P2, Nuendo 2.0 and Gigastudio160). Of course, I have a separate drive to record to.
I did the same arrangement with my Dell laptop. Both systems work perfectly.
I even installed the music apps on the business partition just for trying out demos or new upgrades. This way, I keep my audio partition pure.
FAT32 on all, since I want my system to recognize everything. I don't have to reload all of my samples and instruments either.