[RESOLVED] Duel Boot

[I Love VB6]

I have some old applications that I would like to use however these old applications require two different systems. Two of them only work on W98 and the others only work on XP or earlier but they don't really work good on anything less than XP. I have an XP system HD that I use for the other apps and a lot of other things and I also have a HD with W98 on it but I am constantly mounting one drive or the other so I'm thinking if I had a PC that I could choose which OS I want to boot from that would solve a lot of problems like mounting and un-mounting the two hard drives in order to boot one system or the other. So, I'm asking.....

1) Can I have two masters and choose which master I want to boot
2) Is it possible to boot from the slave drive
3) or how do I put both 98 and XP on same drive and have a selection screen to choose which system I want

[Grant Swinger]

VB98? Don't you mean Windows 98?

Yes, it's possible. If you are running XP you'll have to edit the boot.ini system file to add the 98 boot loader. You need to be very familiar with how Windows boots as well how disk partitions work. Go here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/323427 for directions on how to create a boot menu.

If you want a graphical tool try http://www.boot-us.com

[Shaggy Hiker]

Thread moved to general PC, since it is about the configuration of the computer rather than coding.

[I Love VB6]

My next question was going to be VB6 related. In my VB app i want to allow user to select an option to reboot with XP or W98 and then in that system auto launch the appropiate application. So can you put this back in VB6 where people will see it because not many come here and this thread can sit here forever without any replies I know since I had three other threads for several days and no one replied

[passel]

If you have a general question ask in the general section.
If "next" you have a "VB6 related" question, the start another thread in the VB6 forum.
Generally, you should not have a string of different questions in one thread.
Resolve one question in one thread, and start a new thread for new a new question.

To change the system that boots by default you would have to be able to have VB6 get to the protected boot.ini file and modify the default line, as described in the first link Grant Swinger provided.

I don't know how easy it is to get to a protected system file from VB6, change it to read/write modify it, and change the attributes back.
I'm pretty sure in the old DOS days, if you knew the file was there, you could open it even if it was hidden from view when you did a directory list, but I haven't tried to access a hidden file in a long, long time.

Another option might be just to have several virtual machines, so you can run two or more operating systems in different windows and have access to each operating system at the same time without having to reboot and only have access to one at a time.

[I Love VB6]

Reading the boot.ini file, modifying it and writing it back is not a problem; what I need to know is how to put both systems on the same HD. I have one HD with XP and another HD with VB98.

[Arnoutdv]

Why not use Virtual Machines?

[passel]

Reading the boot.ini file, modifying it and writing it back is not a problem; what I need to know is how to put both systems on the same HD. I have one HD with XP and another HD with VB98.

Assuming you don't want to clone one of the hardrives (or both) to create a virtual machine (or machines) and run that (those), I would think if you could put both drives in the machine, then set the boot manager to boot from one or the other, would be the approach I would take, rather than put both systems on the same hard drive.

[I Love VB6]

I think I already asked if it was possible to boot from the slave but didn't get an answer. I like the idea of being able to boot from one drive or the other. How do I use boot manager to set this up

[Arnoutdv]

http://www.howtogeek.com/214477/how-...ns-of-windows/

[I Love VB6]

One thing I don't think I got any info on was when using two hard drives, one with XP and the other with W98 are they jumpered as master/slave or master/master

[passel]

So, we're talking IDE drives, not Sata?
Either master/slave or Cable Select generally.
You will boot from the master (hence the name Master Boot Record), and its boot.ini is the one that has the list of OS's and the default OS to boot from which drive and partition.

[I Love VB6]

I can't get it to work. I'm experimenting with two versions of XP so I'll call one version Advanced and the other Basic. I have XP Advanced hard drive as Master and Basic XP hard drive as Slave.

I have tried the following edited versions of boot.ini in the Advanced XP windows root directory C:\. I didn't change boot.ini in the Basic XP windows

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Advanced" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Basic" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

With the above configurations I get error message when I try to boot from the 2nd hard drive(XP Basic):

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
Windows root>\system32\hal.dll

hal.dll is present on both systems and I hardly think they are corrupt.

I also tried the following:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Advanced" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Basic" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

and

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Advanced" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Basic" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

and with the above two I get this message:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk


I can always boot the Advanced XP system and the Basic XP will always boot when it is mounted as the Master

What is missing here and what could I be doing wrong

[I Love VB6]

OK, I got it to dual boot but it was kind of wierd