Windows dual boot

[Adcadet]

I installed a second copy of Windows on a new HD, then converted the first HD (containing the original Windows) to a Dynamic Disk. Now I can't boot off that old drive through my BIOS like I like to do. I think this happened to me once before, and there was some simple command I could run to allow the OS on the orignal drive to boot up rather than re-directing to the new OS. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
Thanks,
Adcadet

 

[Mercutio]

Start the recovery console from your Windows install CD and run fixboot and fixmbr.

 

[Adcadet]

maybe I'll just step up and install linux as my primary OS. It's about damn time.

 

[sechs]

Was the new OS install booting from the old disk? If so, I'm curious as to how you were able to covert your system volume to dynamic, since they are expressly not bootable.

 

[Mercutio]

Dynamic volumes are bootable, sechs.
The Windows installer does not create dynamic disks at install time, and diskpart.exe/Disk Management doesn't allow the change of the system volume once Windows is running.

But if you partition and format a dynamic volume on another machine, Windows can install on it just fine. I have a couple machines at home that are set up that way.

 

[sechs]

You're right... if a disk starts it's life as a basic disk, then it's still bootable.

 

[Adcadet]

I was wrong - Dynamic Disks can be read just fine, at least with my SuSE install.

Now the problem is getting a mass storage drive (hdc2) on that Dynamic Disk automagically mounted at boot time, and with permissions to allow everybody (or at least my single user) to read/write/execute everything on the disk. chmod ... -R gave an error of unable to change permission on many of the folders and files.

 

[Mercutio]

So, you want to write to an NTFS volume under Linux?

That doesn't work. Well, OK, there are tricks you can do, but in general, it's discouraged because Linux doesn't grok NTFS security descriptors and therefore might be screwing something important up while it's writing to the drive. That would be bad.

On my laptop (the only dual boot machine I have), I use VMware for Linux to write to NTFS in the rare situation that I need to do so.