Need help with multiboot problem

[PSonic]

I have WinXP Home installed on a 160gig SATA drive. I added a second 160 gig IDE drive in order to install Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

In the past when I had set up a multiboot environment with Win98 and XP, I got the option of picking which OS to load at the boot screen.

With my current setup, I do not get the option to choose at all. The only way I can access the second drive (or switch back to the first) is through the BIOS. It works just fine, but is a little more cumbersome than just choosing it from a boot menu.

Even more unusual, when I am in XP, that drive (SATA) shows up as C:, my DVD burner is D:, and the second drive (IDE) shows up as E:.

When I start from the MCE 2005 HD, that drive shows up as C: and the original SATA drive shows up as D:.

I've looked at the boot.ini files on both drives and they are exactly the same, other than the naming of each individual OS.

The second HD (IDE) is hooked up as a slave with my DVD burner acting as the master.

How do I set this up so that I can access the multiboot screen right from startup? Additionally, is there any way to have consisten drive letters within each OS?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[Liquidlen]

Welcome to Techspot !
You should not be switching your boot choice that way.You would be better off reloading Windows media again as it is a newer version and generally in a dual boot you load Windows from oldest version to most recent.
I highly recommend you move your DVD writer off the same channel as your IDE drive and make that HDD a Master on it's own channel .You are going to suffer a huge speed reduction with your current configuration.
There should be 1 MBR on the first active partition of the primary drive and it will list the both O/S's you have loaded , if you have loaded them properly.
I suspect you made both drives 'Active' when you configured them and only 1 can be.
Can you list the contents of your boot.ini ?

 

[PSonic]

Here's the contents of boot.ini:

Both HDs show the boot.ini as follows:

"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows" - then the name of the OS

The SATA HD is WinXP on the Secondary IDE Master. The MCE 2005 HD is on the Primary IDE Master.