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Having Problems With PartitionMagic & BootMagic and Dual Booting

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In short: I want to install two copies of Win XP on my computer (call them XP1 and XP2), I've used Partition Magic and Boot Magic to do this, but when I boot the computer, all it does is load XP1, instead of loading Boot Magic, and then giving me the choice between the two.

The long version:

I installed Win XP, formatting my 250GB Drive as NTFS. I then installed Partition Magic.

It says that BootMagic needs to be installed on a FAT partition, so following the instructions, I created a 50MB FAT Primary Partition at the start of the drive, and installed a copy of BootMagic there.

I then Resized the Partition that had XP1 on it to free up some space, and copied that partition into the now free unallocated space, creating a duplicate partition with with XP on it.

I then resized this second XP partition to make it bigger. And in the remaining space, I created a 4th Primary Partition, as I wanted a partition that was just for storing files.

So my HD looks like this:
D: BootMagic   FAT      47.0MB   Status=None   Primary
C: XP1         NTFS     50.5GB   Status=None   Primary
E: XP2         NTFS    137.5GB   Status=None   Primary
F: Data        NTFS     50.4GB   Status=None   Primary


I also followed the instructions for setting up BootMagic, and did everything that it said.

However, when I boot, it just automatically loads XP1 without going to the Bootmagic menu and giving me the option to choose between XP1 & 2.


Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening? The only things that stand out to me is:

a) None of the partitions are set to Active, they are all set to "None"
b) The Partition with Boot Magic on it is called D: even though it is at the start of the drive.

However the instructions don't say anything relating to this (other than it does specify that the BootMagic FAT partition should be set to "None"), and I don't know enough to know whether these points are relevent or not.

Any help would be greatly apprciated. :)

Comments

  • Chippy_Minton
    Chippy_Minton Posts: 3,339 Forumite
    Unless you intend to install another OS (e.g. Linux) at a later date, you don't really need Boot Magic for 2 installations of XP. XP automatically adds each installation to its boot.ini file and allows you to choose which one to boot into.

    You also don't need Partition Manager; just use the Windows XP CD (Setup) to partition the drive.
  • nightswimmer
    nightswimmer Posts: 1,015 Forumite
    Unless you intend to install another OS (e.g. Linux) at a later date, you don't really need Boot Magic for 2 installations of XP. XP automatically adds each installation to its boot.ini file and allows you to choose which one to boot into.

    I was hoping to add another HD and possibly have a third installation of XP and also possibly Linux, at a later date.
  • bat999
    bat999 Posts: 1,946 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Hi
    That's a good idea to try Linux later.
    If you use Ubuntu or Kubuntu, for example, they come with a built in boot manager called 'GRUB'. This is a mini-menu that appears at boot up and boots to a default OS but gives you n seconds to intervene and select a different one each time. You can set n yourself.
    Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
  • Chippy_Minton
    Chippy_Minton Posts: 3,339 Forumite
    I was hoping to add another HD and possibly have a third installation of XP and also possibly Linux, at a later date.
    Ah, okay.

    It sounds like the system is still using the normal Windows MBR so is going straight into Windows. Have you tried going into the BootMagic configuration and re-enabling it and rebooting? This should overwrite the MBR with BootMagic's MBR

    As you are in the position of being able to experiment and not worry about losing data you could try one of the free boot managers, for example:

    http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm
    http://gag.sourceforge.net/
    http://www.osloader.com/
  • nightswimmer
    nightswimmer Posts: 1,015 Forumite
    As I've finally solved my problem, I thought I would just report back in case anyone has similar problems in the future and does a search on here.

    I didn't mention in my original message that I had two Hard Drives installed because I didn't think it important, especially as at the time the second disk was blank. Well, it turns out that for some unknown reason, my BIOS was set to boot my two hard drives in the wrong order. So although I installed Windows XP, PartitionMagic and BootMagic on what should have been the first Hard Drive (HD 0) because of how my BIOS was set up I was actually installing them on the Hard Drive that my computer saw as the second Hard Drive (HD 1). As a result, BootMagic wouldn't work as it needs to be on HD0.

    I'm kind of annoyed that neither PartitionMagic or BootMagic displayed the drives in the correct order (i.e. as the computer saw them), or warned me that I was installing it on the wrong drive. :mad:

    As I couldn't get BM to work, following Chippy_Minton's suggestion, I checked out some other Boot Managers. I ended up trying BootIt NG. Although you have to pay for it (after a trial period), it was the one that seemed easiest to use with XP, especially as it has several step by step tuorials available. I'm glad I did though because it displayed the drives correctly, which allowed me to see what had been going wrong all this time.

    So the upshot is, I've finally got all my partitions sorted out, got three copies of WinXP installed, and have ditched BootMagic for BootIt NG. Result! :j

    Thanks again to Chippy_Minton and Bat999 for their help. :) :beer:
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