Install Windows 2000 with XOSL multibootloader on SATA drive
Monday, May 23, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by rgbbw
(8 messages posted)
Thanks Adrian. I sorta followed what you suggested, but took a shortcut. I really
didn't want to have
to use one of my PATA drives out of my other PC, even temporarily. Dan Goodell has
an excellent page
on multibooting with XOSL at http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/,
and I pretty much
followed what he said.
I put Head.exe, Savepart.exe and Part.exe (Ranish partion manager V 2.40) on a DOS
(FreeDOS) bootable
diskette. I used Head to create a backup of the first 63 sectors, including the MBR,
and saved that
on the floppy. Then I used Savepart to create an image of my FreeDOS partition and
save it to a file
on an extended partition of the SATA drive. Then I used Part to reconfigure the first
two partions
into one that was big enough for Windows 2000 (Silly me didn't set up the first partition
big enough
the first time).
Then I installed Windows on the first partition, like it wants to be, with the SATA
drivers on the
floppy disk as discussed earlier in this thread (thanks Curt and JT). When it rebooted
after the
first pass, I noticed it recognized an earlier version of Windows installed on my
computer, and what
did I want to do about that. That might have been there before, so I might have been
able to avoid
some of this effort, I'm not sure. Well, rather than reinstalling again, I told it
to repair Windows.
It dropped down to the "DOS" repair prompt. I typed FIXMBR, which it did, then I
rebooted, and it
came up and finished the Windows installation just fine. All the plug and play connected
okay, and I
went online and did all the Windows updates.
Then I rebooted back to the boot diskette. I used Savepart to create an image of
the Windows
partition and save it to file on the same extended partition the FreeDOS image file
was on. I used
Part to reconfigure the partitions back to the way I wanted them, with the first
partiion at 512 MB
for my FreeDOS, and the second at 6440 MB for my Windows partition (6440 MB is the
same size as my
old PATA IDE drives, so I can backup to them if I want to install them some time
in the future). I
left the remaining partitions with other copies of DOS and Linux alone. Then I used
Savepart to
restore the FreeDOS from the image file back to the first partition, and Head to
restore the first 63
sectors, to restore the XOSL multibooter.
I rebooted to the SATA drive to make sure everything was okay so far, and it was
- it came up to XOSL
as I expected. Then I rebooted to the boot diskette again, and used Savepart to restore
Windows to
the second partition. As per Dan Goodell's notes, I had to go in and edit Boot.ini
on the Windows
partition. This is a hidden system file, so I had to change the attributes to be
able to access it.
In Boot.ini, I changed the Windows partition from (1) to (2). Then I saved and exited
and changed the
attributes back again. Now there's some funny stuff with the Windows registry. Savepart
handled that
excellently. I ran Savepart, and it has an option to Update Windows 2000/XP registry.
I selected
that, and the procedure was very straightforward to select the second partition.
When I exited
Savepart, I ejected the floppy and rebooted back to XOSL. I entered XOSL setup and
added a selection
for Windows 2000, to go with my FreeDOS and Linux, which were still there from before.
Well, that's it. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it wasn't really, and worked
very well. Dan
Goodell suggests installing the FreeDOS last, but I liked having it first so I could
play with XOSL a
bit and get used to it, and also to set up the bootable diskette. The few extra steps
weren't that
bad. BTW, I don't have the FreeDOS partition hidden when I run Windows from XOSL,
and Windows is fine
with that.
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 | | |  | Install Windows 2000 with XOSL multibootloader on SATA drive (rgbbw: Mon, May 23, 2005, 1:25 pm) |
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