choosing boot disk in XP?

stevepaa · 02-10-2010, 02:32 PM

I made a clone of internal PC disk. How can I boot from the external clone?

slodave · slodave's Garage

1) What did you use to make the clone?

2) if it is a true mirror of the 1st drive, then you have to modify the boot.ini file by hand to get the other drive to come up n the initial boot menu...

How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP

stevepaa · 02-10-2010, 02:46 PM

acronis

thanks. i'll try that.

slodave · slodave's Garage

BTW, I've never tried to add a bootable 'external drive'... I take it this would be through USB? If so, You can go into the MB BIOS and change a boot setting to boot USB drive first. In this setup, just remember to unplug or plug the external drive in before turning the computer on...

WolfeMacleod · 02-10-2010, 03:12 PM

Not that I can answer your boot disk question, but I also have a similar question...

Having just reinstalled XP, I want to make an image of the new install.. so that when I have to reinstall again, I don't have to go through the whoel process over...just copy the image.
Any tips on this?

slodave · slodave's Garage

Check your PM, Wolfe..

stevepaa · 02-11-2010, 07:35 AM

yes, a USB drive. I have always used macs. This is a new experience for me.
I have not used CLI since VAX days
How does one go into the MB BIOS and change it? thanks

Rusty Heap · Rusty Heap's Garage

I just bought Norton Ghost, which is supposed to do a full hard-drive copy for full recovery / reinstall if a system crashes. Haven't even openned the box yet though.

Stevepaa, for BIOS access, every PC is different, but right at the start of power-up, you are prompted to go into a set-up menu for a brief second, or, while first powering up, you have to hold down a CTRL S, or CTRL F8 key type of arrangement command to get into the low level BIOS.

tread carefully in there though!

stevepaa · 02-11-2010, 09:59 AM

found it, and tried it. But it got a disk read error and would not boot from the usb drive, so I reset back to what it was and everything works fine as before. I wonder what is wrong with my cloned disk?

slodave · slodave's Garage

I had not tried this before, but in reading now, it looks like it is not so easy to do with Windows...

Ngine.de - How to install and run a FULL Windows XP from a USB drive

From the little reading I just did, it looks like it may not be able to be done with an existing installation of XP.

Dave