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I have Win2k on internal HD (Dell Latitude) as default to boot up. I have added an external HD from blown desktop which has WinXP-Home. Can I select which OP-sys I want to boot up with? Is there a way to have the pc ask me which to use when starting up?

Many thanks.

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For : two practical ways to let your Latitude choose between the internal Win2K and the XP installation on the external drive. pointed to the general idea and was right to flag BIOS support for external booting — that is the first thing to check.

If the laptop firmware supports it, use the one-time boot menu (Dell commonly uses F12) or change the BIOS boot order to put the external USB-HDD first. If the BIOS will not boot USB devices, either temporarily connect the drive internally or use a small boot CD that can chainload USB devices (Plop Boot Manager is a widely used example). FireWire booting is less commonly supported than USB.

If you prefer a text boot menu on the internal disk, let the internal Windows bootloader (NTLDR/boot.ini) present both installations. Boot into the working Win2K, back up C:\boot.ini and add an entry that points to the external disk. Example boot.ini lines (adjust rdisk/partition numbers to match your setup):

[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="Windows 2000" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /fastdetect

Notes and troubleshooting: rdisk(n) is the physical disk number from the BIOS (0 = first disk), partition(n) starts at 1. If you get "NTLDR is missing" copy ntldr and NTDETECT.COM from the XP CD to C:\ (Recovery Console) and repair the MBR/boot sector only if needed. If the XP install came from a different machine you may hit driver/HAL or activation issues — sysprep or a repair install often fixes hardware mismatches. Always back up data and boot.ini before editing, and only run MBR/boot fixes when you understand the risk of making the system unbootable.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

I have Win2k on internal HD (Dell Latitude) as default to boot up. I have added an external HD from blown desktop which has WinXP-Home. Can I select which OP-sys I want to boot up with? Is there a way to have the pc ask me which to use when starting up?

Many thanks.

problem that may exist for you is whether you computer will boot to external hddrive, usb or firewire device

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