Shambler


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.

I appreciate that but using dualbootpro there's no need to press anything. It boots and I choose the OS as per usual, even though they are on different drives. It's also very easy to change the default, rename them and specify the wait time. All done from a Windows GUI.

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

Thanks for all the input, everybody. So I guess it means that I will have to re-install all my VSTs like Alchemy, etc. Not to mention Office and so on. This is starting to sound like the kind of thing I only want to do once!

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?

To all, I repeat - I wrote a couple of utilities that allow services to be turned on /off by the bucket full through 'profiles'.  This essentially does all of the stuff that Black Viper site recommends, but does it dynamically, so you can essentially create a single computer with multiple services 'personalities'.

If ANY one wants to try them, just send me a private message with your email address and I will forward the code.  You can even run a 'test' that cycles through all items you put in the profile, to make sure there are no registry permission problems, but does actually change anything.

Further, the profiles are stored in readable XML files, so you can see exactly what is being done - and can do so BEFORE actually trying it out, so that you can prove to yourself that all of your original settings are in fact saved off.

These utilities have worked for me for the past 4 years, 

Bob Bone

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

garrigus


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.

I wonder why I had so much trouble trying to get it set up? Perhaps it's because I'm booting the same OS (Win 7) from both? Or it could be my stupidity of course.

I have a lean and mean 'Studio' boot disk, and a 'general' boot disk with all the other stuff on it.

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

Thanks Scott, it must have been the way I set it up.

I did it from a fresh build and just cloned the fresh install to a second drive so I never really did an install as such. Perhaps that was why.

Anyway it works now, that's the main thing.

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.