# Dual Boot XP / 2008 different hardrives



## pedrompa (Dec 29, 2009)

Greetings.

I have 3 hard drives with the following setup:
HD1 Primary Master partitioned with Windows XP installed on primary partition;
HD2 Primary Slave with a single partition;
HD3 Secondary Master with Windows 2K8 installed, single partition.

I installed Windows 2008 from a usb drive because the computer does not have a DVD drive. To be able to boot from usb I had to disable all bootable drives, so i disabled HD1 in BIOS. I then successfully installed 2008 on HD3.

The problem is when to choose which Operation System to boot i have to go to BIOS and reorder boot devices so the drive with the OS i want to boot is in first because this mobo does not have a boot device menu (it is an old PC).

Is it possible to "start" windows 2008 from the XP boot menu?
I already added:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard"
to boot.ini but the result is that Windows 2008 appears to be loading but then the screen goes black and the only solution is to restart the computer.

Do i have to do a "boot repair" with the installation disk within Windows XP? Or can i use a tool like BCEdit to add a Windows XP boot option to Windows 2008 boot menu?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Please apologise my bad english.


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## Mumbodog (Oct 3, 2007)

Windows 2K8 uses a different bootloader than XP, boot.ini is no more for Vista and up OS's.

There are some utilities you can try in 2K8 to add XP to the 2K8 bootloader, so XP will show up at post.

This is program was designed for adding XP to Vista-W7, but should work for 2K8. (experiment on your part)

Install and run this program in 2K8, go to the "Add/Remove Entries button, add XP to the list, then hit Save button.
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

If you do not want to use the software, there is a BCD editor built into 2K8, a bit more complicated

Once this is done successfully, XP will no longer use the boot.ini.

.

.


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## pedrompa (Dec 29, 2009)

Thanks for replying Mumbodog.

I know "Vista based" OS's uses a different boot loader, bootmgr. What I wanted to know is if it is possible to have xp controlling the boot, but it isn't. I was mistaken by some posts i read.

I never had Vista, W7 or 2K8 installed on my machines. I had been using 2k3, but the machine died so alternatively I have been using the home office desktop with a XP Pro installation for some time and it has been sufficient for my Web Applications. 
I want to keep that installation for background support until the migration is successfull and that's why I want to make sure I don't damage it. Fiber is comming very soon so I really need a server OS not a desktop one.

I will try the BCDedit tool now.

Thanks again.
Happy new year!


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