Dual boot settings

[peekaboo]

i have one sata hd set as master and one ide hd connected to the primary ide channel (also set as master).
each has an os on it.
i'd obviously like to be able to choose which one i boot to.
i can go into the bios and set one as the primary and then the computer boots to it but there has to be a better way.
i want that screen which asks me which os to boot.
in the "startup and recovery" window i only have one os listed.

what can i do?

[Cricket]

What OS are you using on each HDD? Need to know that in order to tell you which boot loader you need to set up to use.

Cricket

[peekaboo]

i'm using XP pro on both.

should i have the ide drive set to slave? it's the only hd on the cable (and the only ide hd on the board). the optical drive was previously on the primary slot but i moved it to secondary and put the ide hd in the primary. was this correct?

i only did this so that i can run another version of photoshop.
at first i wanted to install the second version into a seperate partiton (or the ide hd) from my regular c drive but as soon as i loaded photoshop up it told me that another version is already installed and i must uninstall the first one.

[peekaboo]

i don't mean to bump but i'm kinda still hanging here...

[daveh551]

Okay, I'm a little out of my element here, but I can give you some of the information.

Multiple boot options are controlled by a hidden file called "boot.ini" in the root of the primary disk. I don't know if it exists if you only have one choice.

Here's the one from my system (running 2 instances of Win 2000 with the recovery console - adjust appropriately)

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional - SP 3" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Recovery Console" /cmdcons


If you have a boot.ini file, you should be able to add entries to [operating systems] section for the second OS disk. The first part is the OS location, the second the description that is in the menu. I have never run mixed SATA and IDE systems, so I'm not sure which element to change - I would try the disk(n) section, but you'll have to experiment. BTW, as is probably obvious, partitions are indexed starting at 1, everything else is indexed starting at 0.

Hope this helps.