How To Dual Boot Without Dual Booting!

[Infinity]

How To Dual Boot Without Dual Booting!

Introduction
First of all let me actually explain what I mean by dual booting without dual booting. That statement just expresses my lack of a proper term for what we are about to do.
Our objective is to get two operating systems on your computer without having to select the operating system the normal way, basically hiding this:



A kind of hidden dual boot, this is useful for a few reasons:

• If you want to hide a secret operating system (not likely).
• If one hard drive crashes you still have a bootable operating system.
• You don’t have to partition your hard drive.
  

Requirements
Ok so let’s get on with it, the requirements are listed below:
Two hard drives, preferably different brands (you’ll find out why later).

• An operating system installed already.
• Another operating system to install.
• A bit of common sense and spare time. (it only took me one hour)
• To understand that I (Humza) or FreeVPS.us won’t be responsible for any data loss or any damage to your property and you will do this knowing the possible consequences.
  

A bit of explaining
At the moment I have Windows 7 installed on one hard drive, it’s my Hitachi 1TB hard drive. I also have a spare Samsung 500GB hard drive which I will use to install my second operating system which is Windows XP x64 Edition. When I boot up my system Windows 7 loads at the moment. Great!

The fun bit
Now we get to the fun bits, you will need to power off your system completely. I recommend also removing the plug from the wall and put on your anti-static wristband if you have one, if you don’t I recommend you just hold a metal screw or some other metal object that isn’t touching the floor.

Open the case then pull the SATA or IDE data cables out and the power cables out of all of your hard drives internal and external. At this point we still don’t have our new hard drive (in my case the Samsung one), so we need to plug in the data and power cables.



Now power on your computer, and insert your 2nd operating system’s CD or DVD. In my case this is the Windows XP x64 Edition, Linux will also do (in fact it is better if your primary operating system fails).

Now install this operating system as you usually would on the 2nd hard drive, making sure once more that no other hard drive is detected. Once you have completed the install, simply plug all of your hard drives back into your computer and boot up, you will notice you will only boot into your primary operating system (Windows 7 in my case).

So now you want to know how to boot into your second operating system
It is very simple from now on, you know this screen right? You’re familiar with it yeah, it’s below.



When you get that screen you should press a key to bring up the Boot Menu, For Gigabyte motherboards you press F12, for ASUS you press F8, For Foxconn motherboards you press ESC. Then select your hard drive, this is where it helps to have separate brands otherwise you may get mixed up. Just hit the hard drive that you installed the second operating system on and your ready to go.

Finally The End!

Ill try and get more pictures and hopefully once I get a camera, a video tutorial. Please feel free to give constructive criticism and feedback. If you have any problems I can try and help, but I cant guarantee anything.

Thank you for taking your time to read this!

[f8ll]

Nice tutorial!

You can set grub to chainload the windows drive as well if you wanted to, it'll save you from going into the boot menu every time you wanted to switch.

[Infinity]

(04-08-2011 04:20 AM)f8ll Wrote:  Nice tutorial!

You can set grub to chainload the windows drive as well if you wanted to, it'll save you from going into the boot menu every time you wanted to switch.

Thanks.

Oh I didnt know that you could chainload!

[redfrix]

Dude. Nice tutorial. Oh btw, how did you captured all the boot screen photos?
Btw. I have LG's boot screen... So i can't see it there lol.

[ninetailfox97]

(04-09-2011 08:24 AM)redfrix Wrote:  Dude. Nice tutorial. Oh btw, how did you captured all the boot screen photos?
Btw. I have LG's boot screen... So i can't see it there lol.

you know, that is a very good question. how did you take a screen shot at the boot screen? I've never heard of a screenshot taker that loads before the OS.

[Infinity]

On my video card I have 1 HDMI port, 1 DVI port and 1 VGA port. The VGA port was spare so I bought http://www.amazon.co.uk/TRIXES-S-Video-A...057&sr=8-7 and plugged it into my Archos DVR and recorded the boot. I then extracted all the frames. The GRUB one was from a virtual machine.

I have a foxconn motherboard, The other motherboard pictures I got of google images. I didn't think that LG made motherboards. So I guess you'll need to do a bit of trial and error.

[Squeenix]

Thanks! I have like, 10 OS's (okay, maybe just 3 distros of linux, macosx, winxp and win7) on my screen and I only ever use one.

[f8ll]

(04-09-2011 11:05 PM)infinity Wrote:  I have a foxconn motherboard, The other motherboard pictures I got of google images. I didn't think that LG made motherboards. So I guess you'll need to do a bit of trial and error.

They don't, they just have a custom Bootsplash. Its probably a Foxconn or something with an AMI or Phoenix BIOS. My magic technique to find out what the keys are when it doesn't specify is just to mash all the F keys.

[Infinity]

I always do that, I work with so many computers and if you mash all the keys you usually get into the bios then exit the bios then mash again and you get to the boot menu or annoyingly the windows recovery thing.

[gbl08ma]

(04-10-2011 05:41 AM)infinity Wrote:  I always do that, I work with so many computers and if you mash all the keys you usually get into the bios then exit the bios then mash again and you get to the boot menu or annoyingly the windows recovery thing.

That, or the motherboard buzzes insistently until you release all the 12 F keys.
Also, don't forget that on some computers it's the DEL or ESC key. On mine it's the DEL key (I have an ABIT I-45C motherboard).