Please give help for dual booting

[radrick01]

Hi

Is there SOMEBODY out there that has the technical expertise to fix this!!! Please help!


I can not stand the way Microsoft forces me to entirely boot windows 8 before asking if I want to load
windows xp! Then it reboots from the start back into windows XP drive.
I want to make my windows xp the primary drive and primary operating system, and tell the boot.ini to
allow me to chose which operating system to start up. I know I will need to switch the primary drive,
but I don't know how to modify the boot.ini file on the windows XP drive to show my choices of operating
systems at bootup.

The windows 8 installation process changes the default operating system to windows 8 and boots the
windows 8 hard drive....

on my system---> "multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)"

to be the primary disk and uses windows 8's own internal boot loader that starts up after windows 8 has
almost completely loaded taking a bunch of unnecessary extra time.

If I set the primary drive back to what used to be primary drive that has Windows XP....

on my system---> "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)"

it will just boot Windows XP without giving a choice to load windows 8, like it does not exist.

I need to add a line set to the Windows XP boot.ini to tell that loader to stop and offer me the Windows
8 hard drive as an option before loading Windows XP just like the old days dual boot we used to do. I
just need the line to put in the boot.ini to point to that drive and start window 8 correctly.

For example:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER

This is my current line for the Windows XP to boot.

Can someone give me a sample file to cut and paste into my Windows XP boot.ini file that will start my windows 8 partition?

Thanks for your time!

Rick

 

[Chicano]

You need to install EasyBCD in Windows 8 to:
1. edit the Win 8 bootloader to include Windows XP
2. to make Windows XP the default OS,
3. to shorten the OS selection timeout to a few seconds.

EasyBCD adds the Windows 8 line to boot.ini but it's the Windows 8 bootloader that controlls which OS boots. Boot.ini can't be edited to include Windows 8, at least not from Windows XP, so it's no use trying to edit it manually.

The New Windows 8 Bootmenu/Bootloader
http://neosmart.net/blog/2011/the-new-windows-8-bootloader/

EasyBCD
http://neosmart.net/blog/2012/announcing-easybcd-2-2-windows-8-dual-booting-and-more/

http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/neosmart/EasyBCD/EasyBCD+2.2/

 

[kyllien]

You can also install Windows XP onto a virtual machine. Windows 8 Pro includes Hyper-V. This way you won't need to dual-boot and will have Windows XP available anytime you need it.

Also note: If you purchased the Windows 8 upgrade and Windows XP was the original OS then the license for Windows XP was consumed by the Windows 8 upgrade. In order to dual-boot you need to have the full version of Windows 8 or purchase a new copy of the original OS.