dual boot question

I use dual booting. I have my two OS on two different drives and use Dual Boot Pro to choose on start up.

I can't recommend that program highly enough, it makes configuration a breeze and AFAIK there's no other way to boot from different drives without entering the BIOS first.

FastBikerBoy


I use dual booting. I have my two OS on two different drives and use Dual Boot Pro to choose on start up.

I can't recommend that program highly enough, it makes configuration a breeze and AFAIK there's no other way to boot from different drives without entering the BIOS first.

Hello.
You actually can go to System Properties > Advanced and then choose which OS loads by default and how many seconds the display shows which OS to load among other options. No need to go into the BIOS. The options are displayed before Windows loads.

Hill62

FastBikerBoy


I use dual booting. I have my two OS on two different drives and use Dual Boot Pro to choose on start up.

I can't recommend that program highly enough, it makes configuration a breeze and AFAIK there's no other way to boot from different drives without entering the BIOS first.

Hello.
You actually can go to System Properties > Advanced and then choose which OS loads by default and how many seconds the display shows which OS to load among other options. No need to go into the BIOS. The options are displayed before Windows loads.

What even if they are on separate physical drives? I thought that only worked if they are in separate partitions on the same drive

Just curious - Alex - why do you want to have 2 Win 8 bootable partitions/drives?

If it for maintaining 2 versions based on Windows Services, then I may have something for you to look at as an alternative.

I have been a programmer since you don't want to know, and I wrote 2 little C# utilities that allow me to create 'profiles' of Windows Services and of Start Items that I want to be able to dynamically disable/enable for either configuring for audio processing or for general processing.  

A Profile of Services would include a list of all of the Services I want to control, and when disabling Services using a Profile, Windows marches down the list, saves the current start up type for each Service in the profile, then sets the start type of those Services to disabled.  Enabling Services would reset each Service's original Start Type from the saved values.

All of the control through these profiles is quite simple, and only takes a couple of mouse clicks.

If you think that would work for you, please send me a private message with an email address and I will zip up and send you the code and the executable.  No installation is required, you just need to create a shortcut and run.  (even has a Test function)

I have used Service Manager and Start Item Manager for several years, for controlling services and start items for purposes of live performance versus general use.

Bob Bone

I dualboot on two different drives, you don't have to enter the bios per se to change which drive boots if your motherboard supports it. 

As it boots up press F12 then select which drive to boot from, you don't have to go into the bios and change boot drive each time.

Dual booting from two separate drives here. No special software. Just installed Win 7 on a separate drive and it automatically set up the multiple booting.

And yes, you need to install your software under both versions of Windows in order to use them. You can't share the programs between the two OS's.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

I have another related question (don't know if this warrants a new thread or not).
Under XP I use hardware profiles so I can boot up in "DAW mode" with my wireless and internal sound card disabled, or in "Online mode". I find Sonar works much better that way.
I know that hardware profiles are not available in later versions of Windows. Are there any better options in Win8 than just going in and disabling the devices individually?

Hey, Sean :)

I sent you an email with the attached Service Manager program and instructions.  If you want to call me to discuss, my number is in the email - I will be available anytime this afternoon after 2 PM est, and then most days and evenings during the week.

When you do get it going, please do post back your results, in case anyone else might want to know how it worked on your system.

Thanks, 

Bob Bone

Hey Karl,

I'm really not sure. Booting the same OS from both might be it, but I would think that should still work. When I installed Win 7, it just detected Vista on the other drive and set up everything automatically. When I boot, I get a menu (right after any bios message) and I can choose to boot into Vista or Win 7.

Now when I get around to Win 8, I'm going to try triple booting. Not sure if that will be as easy, but I'll find out. 


Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

I used dual booting for years (XP and XP then Vista and Vista). Haven't done it with Win7 yet because preliminary testing of my new build indicates having the usual dozens of background processes, networking (non wireless) etc. in a "general purpose" PC doesn't seem to be causing X2 a problem.

Maybe (as with many things PC/Windows performance related) it's a matter of throwing powerful enough hardware at a problem until it goes away.

That utility of Bob's sounds very useful though.

I've never used third-party utilities to select which OS to boot, just the Windows post-BIOS boot manager screen that Windows automatically sets up. The most important key to getting two versions of Windows to co-operate is to install the oldest versions first (because e.g. Win 7 knows about Vista and how to handle booting it, but not vice-versa). And not installing the two copies in the same partition.

Many thanks Bob, I just collected the email.

I've created a test profile and can confirm it all works as advertised - it's a seriously useful little bit of software. And very well documented. No permissions issues as I've got UAC turned off anyway.

One thought - it's possibly worthwhile (especially for those not familiar with Windows services) opening services.msc at the same time simply to get the full(ish) explanation of what each service does plus any dependencies/warnings about the consequences of shutting it down.

And while in services.msc to maybe take the opportunity to switch off what isn't needed at all, like the bluetooth service when the PC doesn't have bluetooth, etc. It's amazing how much unnecessary/irrelevant stuff Windows loads by default.

I meant to include a bit about the recomendations put forth at www.blackviper.com on tweaking services and such

No problem, I've been grubbing around in Windows services ever since Windows has had services.

In the Services Manager program, you can double-click on the header tab

Ah!

I think using a utility such as this makes much more sense then having to maintain deal boot partitions just to set things up for audio processing.

Agreed. As well as saving the hassle of maintaining two Windows installations it saves the cost of a second Windows licence and the disk space to run it.


Kill off any remaining unnecessary auto-loading processes using msconfig, Process Manager (or even better a batch file), and there you go. A minimal, clean Windows environment.

Well Acronis OS Selector works but heavy hacking of the boot config file is required. Not automatic at least in my instance.

Alex, I gave up on OS selector a few years ago as it's too much of a PIA. I use BootIt Bare Metal now http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm 
It's cheap - and it's easy to set up.
 
For me the most important thing, whether you're booting from different partitions or disks, is to *hide* the partitions you're not booting from. This way - each Windows partition doesn't know *anything* about the others, doesn't share the BCD area etc. Of course, any "data" disks or partitions are visible to all.
 
If you dual boot the Microsoft way - you just boot from one BCD partiton which then lets you choose the Windows partition to boot from. If you lose the BCD partition you can't boot from *anything* until you restore/fix it. I prefer to have a BCD partiton with each Windows partition - so they know absolutely nothing about each other. This way if I change anything on one configuration - it has nothing to do with the other(s).
 
I hope this makes sense - this topic is full of potential minefields, and is not for the faint hearted ;-)  
 
 

Hi John

Yes I managed to get all my partitions hidden with OS Selector which is great, but yes I agree it's a total pain in the ass, not something I would fully recommend. Your solution is probably better.

I'm getting away with it so far....! (and cheers Bob!).