Two SATA HD's and two different OS's

[jds1966]

I think I have seen this thread before but I havent been able to find it. I have two SATA harddrives, one with XP and one I just installed Vista Premium, all installed on an Asus mb. The computer always wants to boot to HD0, the one with Vista on it. The only way I can boot to HD1 with XP on it is to unplug the sata cable for HD0. Can somebody tell me an easier way to select which HD I want to boot to. Is there software or a command I could enter or is there hardware I could use? Please help?

 

[gavinseabrook]

Right Click on "My Computer" and select Properties. Go to the Advanced Tab. Select Startup and Recovery options and when that screen comes up, there should be an option for "Time to display list of operating systems". Set that to 15, and that should allow you to either select your windows XP install, or your Vista install during boot up (Right before splash screen). Good luck

 

[Samstoned]

vista boots diff from xp
check with M$ on how to setup boot manager
what order did you do install?
you may need a 3rd part boot manager to handle or do reinstall with xp on drive 0 and install xp first
there may be a bios boot config to help fix this
if vista was installed last it should have created a multi boot config
from MS

1.	Use Bootsect.exe to restore the Windows Vista MBR and the boot code that transfers control to the Windows Boot Manager program. To do this, type the following command at a command prompt: Drive:\boot\ Bootsect.exe –NT60 All

In this command, Drive is the drive where the Windows Vista installation media is located.
2.	Use Bcdedit.exe to manually create an entry in the BCD Boot.ini file for the earlier version of the Windows operating system. To do this, type the following commands at a command prompt.

Note In these commands, Drive is the drive where Windows Vista is installed.
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –create {ntldr} –d “Description for earlier Windows version”

Note In this command, Description for earlier Windows version can be any text that you want. For example, Description for earlier Windows version can be "Windows XP” or “Windows Server 2003."
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=x:

Note In this command, x: is the drive letter for the active partition.
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast
3.	Restart the computer.

 

[Nodsu]

Looks like you installed Vista wrong.. Did you disconnect the XP drive when installing Vista? You shouldn't have done that.

 

[Bluemouse]

Yea, vista is a pain since it changes the boot loader, but there are a few utils you can use (I forget the name of them, but google it) to easily give you a gui for your bootloader in vista. Make sure you leave both drives connected, and then install vista. It will overwrite the boot loader from xp (This is totally reversible with that program I was talking about) and then use the program in vista to change the boot sequence, default timeout, etc.

Note that there is no easy gui in Vista to change the boot loader. You would have to type commands into the command prompt, but that program I was talking about allows you to do it much easier

 

[jds1966]

Ok, thanks guys. And yes I did have the old drive disconnected when I installed Vista. Hopefully I can reinstall Vista and fix my problem.