Hi,
have GParted ISO on CD. Booted from that CD, when the menu screen finally arrives i have several options. The last one is Boot From MBR Second HDD

My WindowsXP OS is on the first HDD on IDE Primary Master channel. My Second HDD (which has WinME installed as the OS) is on IDE Secondary Channel as Slave

Question: on the GParted Menu, if i select "Boot From MBR Second HDD", will it boot my WinME OS HDD on Secondary Slave channel ?? If not, then what reconfiguration do i need to do (keeping the WinXP HDD as Primary Master).

i'm thinking here "a Dual-Boot scenario" using the GParted LiveCD as the trigger

thanks

(previously Robmoski)
Central Coast NSW Aussie

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

Kind of a long way around but I guess you could. I assume it uses GRUB. So a grub conf or you can manually enter it each time at boot. It may or may not fully boot an OS in all cases. Grub is a boot loader not exactly a way to load an OS.

What you ought to do is just use the XP's multiboot features.

As for what is primary and slave is a hardware function. Either the ide cable or the jumpers select which is which to bios. Dos and most MS products use what bios reports and then it looks for the first active bootable partition.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

Jefro: So a grub conf or you can manually enter it each time at boot. It may or may not fully boot an OS in all cases.

IT WORKS !!

i left my main WinXP HDD(3 partitions) on the Primary Master channel and physically bolted in my other WinME HDD(2 partitions) and connected it to the Primary channel in the Slave position (jumper in the CS position). Probably connecting the WinME HDD as Secondary Master would be better tho.

inserted GParted LiveCD, rebooted, it booted up to GPartEd Menu and i selected "Boot from MBR First HDD" which it then did.....into XP Desktop ! Then i rebooted, back to GPartEd Menu and selected "Boot from MBR Second HDD" which it wouldn't do ! So i then selected "Boot from 1st Partition Second HDD" which it did...arrived in WinME Desktop ! With WinME booted it wouldn't read XP Drive's files....correct, as its its FAT trying to read NTFS. With XP booted it read WinME's files (NTFS reading FAT).

So what i have here is a dual-boot system containing WinXP and WinME WITHOUT having a dual boot-system setup......simply by triggering the GParted LiveCD at boot!

then, to go back to a single OS system, all one needs to do is boot without the LiveCD. It'll boot the Primary Master C:\ which is WinXP, and still read the WinME HDD when booted !

interesting.

(previously Robmoski)
Central Coast NSW Aussie

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

this might also work
http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

larry