Dual Booting.

[Josephb175]

Can someone please tell me how I can dual boot. Here is my problem.

I currently have Windows XP Home installed on my C drive. I also have XP Professional installed on another hard drive, F drive. How can I switch from the C drive to the F drive without having to restart the computer?

I have heard there is software that will allow this task but don't know what this process.

Thanks,

Joe B

[ski]

It's my understanding that because an O/S in a dual boot environment is selected during startup, the system has to be rebooted in order to select the other O/S.

[rond36]

I haven't heard of any software that would allow you to switch opperating systems without rebooting.

Why would you want to duel-boot XP Home and Pro?

[Josephb175]

Maybe I use an incorrect term.

What I want to do to switch drives without rebooting. Sorry, I'm still a novice at computing terms. You would think after 9 years of using a computer I would know what term to use.

[Paul Komski]

It's simple enough to do with XP/XP or XP/2K dual boots because both of these combinations can use the same executable code in the partition boot sector of the active partion on C.

Just add the line:-
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

to the operating systems in the boot.ini file in the C drive of the WindowsXP Home installation.

You should note that rdisk has incremented to 1 from 0; this indicates the drive to boot that OS from.

As long as WinXP Pro is on the first partition then partition(1) is correct - but would need modifying appropriately if on another partition.

The alternative is to use boot overlay software and a boot manager - but its not necessary with your scenario.

Both scenarios require a reboot to intialise the installation but should present you with a boot menu at startup.

[rond36]

Originally posted by Josephb175
Maybe I use an incorrect term.

What I want to do to switch drives without rebooting. Sorry, I'm still a novice at computing terms. You would think after 9 years of using a computer I would know what term to use.

Sorry that can't be done!!!

Duel booting is fairly simple but changing operating systems without rebooting is imposible

[Paleo Pete]

"Booting" the computer means loading drivers for the hardware as well as OS specific system files, whatever processes are configured to run, scanning the registry and following its commands and configurations, ditto fir system.ini and win.ini, and in the case of NT based systems, a couple of other ini files.

All that is literally impossible without rebooting the machine, not the least because a number of the drivers are held in memory as well as other data to run programs. To load another OS you'll have to reboot, no way around it I've ever heard of.

[rahulkothari]

Josephb175: I currently have Windows XP Home installed on my C drive. I also have XP Professional installed on another hard drive, F drive. How can I switch from the C drive to the F drive without having to restart the computer?

Joseph, were you referring to this ?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

Use Microsoft® Virtual PC 2004 to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with the click of a button.

[rond36]

Well Pete I think we were both wrong and it's from MS and you can try it for 45 days free $129 to buy it.

Thanks rahulkothari

[Paul Komski]

I'll have to eat humble pie as well - it's a technology that doesn't seem to have been widely discussed - around here anyways.

Am trying-out the trial and initial reactions are that it could be of value for certain things. I'm just running Win98 as a guest OS on WinXP. You need lots of RAM and HDD space and certain things such as SCSI and USB are limited/non-existent. Because the Virtual PC runs on a Virtual HDD (it is a file somewhere on the host setup) it can't access any other real HDDs or partitions on your system.

Nice to have a new "toy" to play with and I can certainly see some uses for it - though it is not a good substitute for a full multi-boot - IMHO - unless you have a real excess of "resources".