Dual Booting Win XP & 2000 with Norton Ghost images

[Special-K]

I have two 40Gb IDE drives, one contains Win 2000, the other Win XP. I have a Ghost 9 image of each system on a third 80Gb backup drive. Normally I use a drive caddy to physically switch between the two systems. What I'd like to do is put both those system images on one of the 40Gb drives so I can multiboot to save wear and tear on physically switching between the drives.

I had an attempt at this last night but failed.
I got as far as creating two partitions on one of the two 40Gb drives and restored both images into the partitions I'd created but when I rebooted the screen just said PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT. I tried restoring the XP image into the partition using the Install MBR option but it still said the same message when I rebooted.

I'm obviously doing something wrong.
Can someone explain the correct procedure?

 

[poertner_1274]

I have never dealt with this situation, but it would seem to me that your backup image is from a 40gig drive, and when you are trying to split the drive into 2 20gig partitions for your 2 OS' then it is running into a problem, because it is looking for the full 40gig and is only finding 20. That would be my thoughts, but am unsure if that is actually what is happening.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:

 

[Special-K]

Hi

Yes I think youre right. Am using no more than 10Gb on the W2K and XP systems so they should fit in the 20Gb partitions. According to Norton Ghost you can resize the backup to fit the smaller partition (they give an example of 3Gb used in a 6G partition and putting that down to a 4Gb partition requires resizing the image). Unfortuntely this option is "greyed out" for some reason. Google searches also throw up others having this problem too.

I also noticed when I restore either of the images to a 40Gb drive the restore reaches 100%. When I do the same on the 20Gb partition the restore reaches 50% then says its finished although it doesnt report an error.

Time to try another backup program methinks.

 

[poertner_1274]

Sorry I haven't had any first hand experience with it, but I would think that once it reaches that 20gig, with no more to go it will report it is finished, when it actually isn't. Good luck with finding other programs or a solution for this one.

 

[Special-K]

Ok. I've managed to produce a 40Gb drive with two 20Gb primary partitions using Partition Magic. The first partition contains Windows 2000 and boots ok. The second partition contains Windows XP. Both systems have been created from Ghost images that came from a ONE partitioned drive so am not sure if this is gonna work or not.

I guess first I should make the second partition the active partition and see if it will boot XP. If it does is it just a case of amending the C:\boot.ini file?

I tried this but I keep getting an error message when trying to save the file "Access to c:\boot.ini denied". [

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Both images (W2K and XP) were taken from a C-drive, right?
Both images contain their own MBR and startup-stuff, which is different.
Loading W2K into C on the partitioned HD worked fine, because W2K comes from C.
XP goes in the second partition (theoretically D) but all file-info and registry is still pointing to C:
Houston, we have a problem!

You should try (from within W2K) to modify c:\boot.ini and add a line for XP, in this form:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /fastdetect
(could also be \WINNT, check the XP-partition)

Partition(1) is your W2K.

Seen from W2K, XP is on D.

Once you boot into XP, you could change the driveletters around, XP becoming C and W2K becoming D, but I am on thin ice here, never done this. This would only be valid as long as you are booted into XP.
Good luck.

 

[Special-K]

That's a good point about both images pointing to C.
Best way is prob to reinstall.

Have finally got it working.
Installed Win2000 on partition 2
Restored Ghost image XP to partition 1
Amended boot.ini on the XP to include the second partition.
Rebooted and I'm now presented with a menu for either XP or 2000
allowing me to switch between either system