boot.ini in a multi-boot system 1

[Terpsfan]

I initially had on one hard drive a dual boot system with Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Server. This drive had two partitions. The boot.ini file existed on the C: logical drive where the XP Professional installation resided. A virus contaminated this partition.

I then installed a second hard drive in the computer and partitioned the second hard drive into 2 partitions. I installed Windows 2000 Server on the first partition on the second hard drive. I have left the original hard drive setup intact.

I now want to install XP Professional on the second partion of the new hard drive, and then wipe out and reformat the original hard drive.

This of couse is going to screw up the original boot.ini setup on the first hard drive. Can I move this original boot.ini file over to the new hard drive or how do I go about this?

I hope I have explained this well. If you need more clarification, please let me know. Thanks.

 

[Sparent]

You could, technically, but you'd have to re-write parts of the boot.ini file to reflect the differences from the old to the new drive, long, cumbersome process if you are not familiar with the makeup of this file.
My advice is, make the new disk master on its IDE controller and the old disk a slave. Then, reinstall the new disk the way you described here and the boot.ini file will be recreated correctly.

Feel free to post further questions.

Simon

 

[Terpsfan]

Your advice is probably the correct advice but I have already installed the OS on the second hard drive - I really don't want to have to redo it. Right now I have XP Pro and 2000 Server on the first hard drive and 2000 Server on the second hard drive. When I boot up I see 3 OS's to choose from the 2 drives. If I reformat the first hard drive and do a clean install of XP Pro would that create a boot.ini that would allow me to boot from either drive. What I am aiming at is to have XP Pro on the first drive exclusively and 2000 Server on the second. Thanks...

 

[Sparent]

Yes the boot.ini file will be appended to reflect the changes you made to the drives. Then again, i saw instances where the file was not rewritten so i went in the file and deleted the line of text pertaining to the OS that had been removed or to an OS i didn't want to boot from.

Piece of advice, keep a Boot MAgic floppy close at hand and make a copy of the original/functional boot file on a floppy just in case.

Best of luck,


Simon