esco wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2010 at 2:06am:

By "it worked", do you mean you were able to successfully boot your PE partition . . . presumably, merely by making it the active partition and rebooting?

If so, then I think what you're asking for is some ideas on how to switch the active partition back and forth between your XP partition and your PE partition, right?

A bare-bones method requiring nothing to install would be to use a tiny command-line utility that directly swaps the active partition.  If you have a Partition Magic CD, it comes with pqboot32.exe, a simple utility that runs from a PE or XP command-prompt window and does exactly that--swaps the active partition and reboots.

If you don't own Partition Magic, a comparable free alternative to pqboot32 is MBRWiz.  Download the 32-bit version of MBRWiz.exe and copy the file to one of your partitions--I'll use d:\mbrwiz.exe for example.  Then create a desktop shortcut to "d:\mbrwiz.exe /bootmenu".  Whenever you want to reboot into the other partition, double-click your shortcut, select which partition you want to set active, and reboot.

If you don't mind installing something, you can install a genuine boot manager.  The boot manager will present a menu every time you boot, and you'll select which partition you want to boot into from the menu.

It sounds like the boot manager you already found doesn't quite fit your needs.  You've already created your partitions, so a boot manager that doesn't need another partition for itself would be ideal for your purposes.  Take a look at the free GAG boot manager.  It installs in Track-0 of the hard disk, so you won't be forced to repartition.  You can set it up to present two boot choices: XP, or your custom PE partition.

esco

I guess I don't understand what your needs are....

Quote:

Isn't that just a *boot manager*--it's Microsoft's boot manager for multi-booting, but still a boot manager--how is that different than another boot manager that presents you with a menu during boot that takes you to whichever OS you choose?

Are you saying you don't want a boot manager that uses the *Active* partition to control which OS boots--but, instead uses a *path* like found in *boot.ini* that points to the *boot partition*?

Or, are you saying you want to use *boot.ini*?

Quote:

I'm not familiar with *Partition Logic*--under what OS does it operate--i.e. DOS, WinNT, Linux.....??????  Isn't that a function of the BIOS?  My RAID controller will not work in Windows unless I add drivers--but it works fine in DOS because the BIOS has already loaded the needed DOS OS drivers so the RAID controller appears in that OS environment......!

hello again,
useful information:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14127&pid=111856&mode=threaded&...

place to find the Boot floppies in zip file.
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14127&pid=159119&mode=threaded&...
Regards Ben

. I had the idea that it may work against a partition with a similar configuration to a fdd.

So the PEBuilder cannot tell that you are installing to non-usb/internal drive. The partition configuration tricks it into thinking that its installing to a fdd

esco

I have a BartPE partition that is bootable. But it doesn't do anything that can't be done from the CD. Have you found something that can't be done from the CD?

Quote:


I thought I was done with the 'Pick-boot-which-one' issue !! My preferred boot manager is disappointing me !?

How do I get this fixed?

esco wrote on Mar 5^th, 2010 at 8:30am:

It was fun making BartPE boot from the HD but apart from booting faster than the CD, it has no advantages that I can see. At times it is nice not to have to find a CD so the partition does have a place. Mine is still on the HD but is rarely used.