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Inspiron 9300, how to boot 2nd HD from modular bay? - Page 2

post #21 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:05am
Try using BCEDIT to view the boot options

I believe its a free download
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post #22 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:13am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dave-p View Post
how did you install the OS on each drive ?

Did you do so as the internal drive then move the drive into the Modular Bay adaptor?

Did you ever try to install the second OS from the Modular drive of course you would have to setup the CD ROM as an external drive

I am thinking the drive parameters were not set correctly during the install.

Yes just like that.
Yes, I can install the OS from my external CD but it won't boot.
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post #23 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:18am
try using a Boot Manager I believe BCEDIT is one that may help setup the boot options,

If not try searching Boot Managers.

I have not done this in some time, but I beleive you have to use a boot manager program to be able to select which OS (when using 2 different ones) to boot from at start up
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post #24 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:21am
Thread Starter 
BCEDIT or a boot manager cannot help me if the bios doesn't see a HD to boot from.
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post #25 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:31am
I know windows Vista (and Windows 7) and XP do not play well together. it could be related to this problem.

If you see the drive while booted into windows from the internal drive it tells me the drive is working.

Question is, is it not reconzied until the OS boots up, or is it present to the system right from the start. What changes from Post to boot up.

IMO you have nothing to loose give the boot manager a try.

Also if you have not tried already try just booting with the drive in the Modular bay - remove the internal drive. just for the heck of it

let me know how that goes, and the Boot Manager

I will be back on Tommorrow night - time to run have a early start Tuesday

Cheers
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post #26 of 37
9/15/09 at 1:59am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dave-p View Post
I know windows Vista (and Windows 7) and XP do not play well together. it could be related to this problem.

If you see the drive while booted into windows from the internal drive it tells me the drive is working.

Question is, is it not reconzied until the OS boots up, or is it present to the system right from the start. What changes from Post to boot up.

IMO you have nothing to loose give the boot manager a try.

Also if you have not tried already try just booting with the drive in the Modular bay - remove the internal drive. just for the heck of it

let me know how that goes, and the Boot Manager

I will be back on Tommorrow night - time to run have a early start Tuesday

Cheers
I know they don't like each other because I tried dual boot and had probleam. That's why I want them totally separated in different HD's with their own boot sectors.

Again, the bios doesn't see the HD in the modular bay AT ALL! Not matter which OS is loaded for a boot manager to work the HD has to be recognized and bootable.

Yeah I tried that already, removing the internal drive, loading the OS in the modular HD but it doesn't work either.

Thanks for your time.
Regards
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post #27 of 37
9/15/09 at 7:08pm
I been reading through the threads on this topic and found this by one member who had the boot drive setup from the modular bay in his 9300.

I set my second hard drive to boot via the boot.ini.

Here is what I put in mine so I could boot off my old hard drive with windows XP

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional OLD" /fastdetect
/NoExecute=OptIn

P.S. the bios has nothing to do with it...

If you have any questions, let me know...

here is the thread

http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...d+drive&page=8
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post #28 of 37
9/15/09 at 7:18pm
and this was the only other thread on the topic I found

http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...+modular+drive
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post #29 of 37
9/15/09 at 10:02pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dave-p View Post
I been reading through the threads on this topic and found this by one member who had the boot drive setup from the modular bay in his 9300.

P.S. the bios has nothing to do with it...

If you have any questions, let me know...
Hi Dave and thanks for taking the time to search for that but this guy is dual booting. He's using a single boot.ini file to control both drives. I can do that too but as I said before that's not what I need.

The bios has everything to do with it.

I have 2 drives, each with it's own OS, MBR and boot loader. When I switch IDE channels changing the boot order in bios, the machine boots normally. Same with changing the boot order manually.
That's because the bios checks for a drive first. If one is found the OS takes over and checks for boot sector and so on and then boots up.
If the bios doesn't find a drive to boot from (which is my case) the process stops there. The MBR and everything else goes unnoticed and the machine won't boot.
You can easily test this if you want. Remove a CD-ROM and replace with a HD with any OS loaded into it. Go to bios and change the order to boot from that drive and the machine will boot just fine.
See what I mean? that's what I want to do but I can't because that option is missing in bios.
What bothers me is why the bios can boot from a CDROM but not from a HD and why the manual shows that option but it is not in the boot sequence menu.

Anyway, would be nice if some bios guru can come up with a fix or at least an explanation.
Once again, thank you for your time. I appreciate your interest and your will to help.

Cheers!
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post #30 of 37
9/15/09 at 10:38pm
well I am also wondering if the A05 BIOS removed it.

wonder if flashing to an older BIOS might work for you
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post #31 of 37
9/15/09 at 10:47pm
Thread Starter 
I've checked already and the option is missing on ALL versions, that's why I need someone with a XPS Gen 2 to tell me if the option is present there.
If so, I can flash the bios to the XPS latest and I'll be a happy camper.
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post #32 of 37
9/17/09 at 12:13pm
So explain again how you want things to work. I didn't understand you but I'm assuming you wanted it so that:

You have the internal HD's boot priority above the secondary HD. You remove the internal HD. The secondary HD still boots.

Is this what you wanted?
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post #33 of 37
9/17/09 at 6:40pm
Ok so I read this thread again since I had more time. You want to boot two hard drives without a bootloader? And you say that choosing the CDROM in the BIOS doesnt boot the HD. I will have to try this myself once I install an operating system on my secondary HD.

Still the easiest option would just be to use a bootloader. I've had XP, Vista, and OSX on my machine at once with a bootloader and didn't have any problems. If you had a problem in the past, I would just urge you to try it again. The bootloader is in the MBR and only the config files lie in other partitions. Anyway, there is another approach to boot both OS'es without a bootloader (I think) that requires you use media direct.
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post #34 of 37
9/17/09 at 7:29pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
So explain again how you want things to work. I didn't understand you but I'm assuming you wanted it so that:

You have the internal HD's boot priority above the secondary HD. You remove the internal HD. The secondary HD still boots.

Is this what you wanted?
Kind of...
I want to boot from each drive without removing them. I could achieve that by just changing the boot order in bios.
The problem is that the option to boot from the modular bay is missing in the "boot sequence" menu.
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post #35 of 37
9/17/09 at 7:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
Ok so I read this thread again since I had more time. You want to boot two hard drives without a bootloader? And you say that choosing the CDROM in the BIOS doesnt boot the HD. I will have to try this myself once I install an operating system on my secondary HD.

Still the easiest option would just be to use a bootloader. I've had XP, Vista, and OSX on my machine at once with a bootloader and didn't have any problems. If you had a problem in the past, I would just urge you to try it again. The bootloader is in the MBR and only the config files lie in other partitions. Anyway, there is another approach to boot both OS'es without a bootloader (I think) that requires you use media direct.
1. I can't use a bootloader because at bootup time the HD is not recognize by the bios as a bootable device.
2. I don't want to use a bootloader because I don't want W7 boot files on my XP drive.

Nothing short of a bios fix can help me because the bios has to see the HD before anything happens.

Thanks for your replies.

Cheers!
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post #36 of 37
9/17/09 at 8:16pm
Chainbooting does not require the BIOS to recognize the device as bootable. Anyway, chainbooting would require a bootloader too. You're just gonna have to get over this bootloader fear because reasons like this are why they were made. There won't be any BIOS updates to get around this. There are also many different bootloaders for you to choose from and you can have it sit in its own partition (hence config files for one OS would not lie in the other OS'es partition).
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post #37 of 37
9/17/09 at 9:39pm
Thread Starter 
Well..., I guess I'll just keep switching HD's back and forth.
On the other hand, if someone can provide me with a raw bin of the bios I may be able to reset the option to be active.
I can't get over the fact that the manual shows it but the bios doesn't. I believe the option is there waiting to be turn on.

I appreciate your replies, thanks!
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