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Hello,
I have 3 partitions, first two for separate XP installs. What is the best boot manager to load it separatly, I mean, to have each one on drive C:
I have done it successfully on my desktop with GAG (hiding first windows partition durign installing second one), but it seems there is no way to install GAG on my NC10 – when I click “install on hard drive” it always installs on pendrive im booting.
anyone?
I susspect it should be MBR only Boot Manager, not dependent on ony of this first two partitions.
GAG (http://gag.sourceforge.net/) is the one I used on my desktop with success, it’s MBR only, but as I say before – can not install it on my NC10 HD.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Hi imsick,
I don’t think you need to use a 3rd party boot manager to do what you want. All you really want is to hide the first partition during the install and unhide it again afterward, and you don’t need to change the boot loader to do that.
I think this will work for you:
1. Hide first partition
2. Install XP as usual – once you boot into this it will set C: to be the visible partition and will keep that even once you unhide the other one. The XP installer will make the second partition active.
3. Unhide first partition
4. Change active partition back to the first one if you want
4. Edit boot.ini on whichever is now the active partition so that it includes options for both installsThe above would mean you are using the standard windows boot loader and menu, so no need for GAG. Hiding/unhiding and setting active partition can be done with various tools that can be loaded from CD or USB drive. One I use is Paragon Hard Drive Manager but there are many others.
If you really want to use GAG, then it seems to me you’re going to have to get it to install to the second hard drive, because the BIOS sets the USB drive to be the first one. I’m not a GAG expert so I can’t really advise on that. The only other option I can think of is using Grub or Grub4DOS on the USB drive to swap the drives around before installing GAG but i think that might be overkill…
I can highly recommend MasterBooter(http://www.masterbooter.com)
Works perfectly and is shareware in its truest form – no expiration date on the sharewareversion.
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