Windows dual boot option

Ok, here we go again; the first time I installed my two OS on my hard disks, after POST, the bios would let me choose what OS to load. Now, this is not happening anymore, so everytime I want to upload one of the two OS, I have to manually configure the boot sequence from bios, as the multiboot option screen does not show up anymore. Does anyone know how to fix it? I even reinstalled both OS on my hard disks, but to no avail. Any help from expert windows users will be much appreciated, thanks

ENRICO

 

I Am myself a newbie with this kind of setup, but what already learn is (and following some lecture from the geeks here) I have an old Dell and I needed to have windows 98 and Windows 2000, so I installed 98 SE and in the other partition 2000, but (always one) due to bad "planning" had to install other "upgrades" to 98, and this ruined all my work. Reformat the partition and reinstalled 98, but this time only had 98, no questions about chosing one or the other OS. So, if you need 2000 and Xp, install them (or reinstall) in that order.:confused

 

Which two OSs are you using?

 

At last, problem solved. I just did a clean format of both hard disks and reinstalled Win xp and Win xp pro, and all is well. Don't know what caused the dual boot problem, but it is resolved. Thanks to those who replied and tried to help me out, yours truly

ENRICO

 

What would cause this simple. You need to install the older operating system first and then youll see a menu to ask what operating system to boot up in. So in your case, XP is older than XP Pro

 

Hi FaramirX, so you are saying the problem was caused by installing the new OS first? I did not know that, I'll consider it the next time, thanks for your insight, very helpful, bye

ENRICO

 

I'm fairly sure that you could have started the default copy of XP and edited the boot.ini to show both choices and saved the file. So it would look something like this [TWO choices]:

Instead of something like this [ONE Choice (so the Boot Loader does not display) ]:

You can see your current working boot.ini by Right clicking My Computer>selecting Properties>Advanced>Startup and Recovery settings button>Edit button (just exit Notepad without saving anything). Usually the only change will be the partition number and description.
If yours only had the one choice as before you would have added a second line pointing to the partition that was not listed.

 

Hi Sach2, I thought about working on the boot.ini file, but I did a complete reinstall instead, next time i'll try that first, what concerned me is that I thought I had messed something up, maybe a windows system file, that is why i chose to start all over again, well, I guess I learned something new today, thank you so much, enjoy the Christmas holidays

ENRICO:wave

 

Glad you got things working. And editing the boot.ini to show two choices should get you back on track if the problem should occur again. I didn't try to explain earlier because I wasn't sure of your Operating Systems and am unsure how Vista handles the boot loader.

Thanks for the well wishes and may you enjoy your Christmas holidays as well!

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Note: For anyone reading this thread in the future the sample boot.ini in the second quote box in my reply above is not a valid boot.ini because of my editing. The partition numbers for the default partition and the partition list don't match. Please don't take it as a valid example.

A valid single OS boot.ini would look like this: