Dual Boot XP/2003 Help!

[alfiboy]

Hi, I'm trying to have a dual boot XP and 2003. They are installed in two different hard drives. However,when I boot my PC goes right to XP. I'm able to see the other hard drive with win 2003 files on it. Here's my boot.ini look like

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

thank you

How did you install Windows 2003? It should have edited your boot.ini file. However, you should be able to edit it to look like this and it should work.

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /fastdetect

[kinesis1812]

Hi there,

I had exactly the same problem. What I'd done was install XP Pro on the C drive, then Server 2003 on the D drive, then found that XP had problems so I had to format the C drive and reinstall, which meant the boot.ini only recognized XP Pro.

I edited my boot.ini file very similar to the one given by nicentral, except for the Server 2003 line which was as follows (because it was installed on a logical partition on the same physical drive as XP):

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /fastdetect

This didn't work. It seems that when I installed XP after Server 2003, it caused a couple of files to be overwritten on the boot partition (where the boot.ini is located - in this case the C drive) with the XP versions of these files. All I had to do to get round this was to boot into XP, copy the "NTLDR" and "NTDETECT.COM" files from the Server 2003 CD to the root of the C drive (overwrite the existing versions) and hey presto, I can boot into Server 2003!

Hope this is useful to someone else and saves them some time!

[prasams]

Hi,

Great stuff. it worked like charm

Hi there,

I had exactly the same problem. What I'd done was install XP Pro on the C drive, then Server 2003 on the D drive, then found that XP had problems so I had to format the C drive and reinstall, which meant the boot.ini only recognized XP Pro.

I edited my boot.ini file very similar to the one given by nicentral, except for the Server 2003 line which was as follows (because it was installed on a logical partition on the same physical drive as XP):

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /fastdetect

This didn't work. It seems that when I installed XP after Server 2003, it caused a couple of files to be overwritten on the boot partition (where the boot.ini is located - in this case the C drive) with the XP versions of these files. All I had to do to get round this was to boot into XP, copy the "NTLDR" and "NTDETECT.COM" files from the Server 2003 CD to the root of the C drive (overwrite the existing versions) and hey presto, I can boot into Server 2003!

Hope this is useful to someone else and saves them some time!