Choose next boot drive on reboot?

[monoman]

I have a dual boot pc with 2 drives, both of which have xp on them.

If I want to boot up my other side, I have to reboot and wait for the screen prompt to choose the other drive I want to boot from.

Quite frankly, I'd rather be off making a cup of tea. Is it possible to choose the next boot drive at reboot time?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I have a dual boot pc with 2 drives, both of which have xp on them.

If I want to boot up my other side, I have to reboot and wait for the screen prompt to choose the other drive I want to boot from.

Quite frankly, I'd rather be off making a cup of tea. Is it possible to choose the next boot drive at reboot time?

You need a "Boot Manager". I'm not sure what's available for XP. Try some googling. ;)

[Wowbagger]

You can set the default operating system from System Properties. On the Advanced tab, look for "Startup and Recovery", and click the Settings button under it.

There might also be software solutions to make this easier, if you are going to change the OS back and forth, frequently. But, it's been a while since I've looked into boot managers.

[monoman]

Cheers, I'll have a look for boot managers and report back...

[Wudang]

Good tutorial on boot.ini here
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm

[monoman]

I've had a look at boot managers but they all seem to be about multiple operating systems and choosing after the pc has shut down and re-booted.

I suppose I could write a program, to run before reboot, that would alter the boot.ini file depending on which drive I want to reboot from. (I'd have to do this for both drives).

Does anyone know how to insert a program to run before xp reboots?

i.e. I would ask xp to reboot and it would run my program before actually rebooting.

[monoman]

I've found out how to run a program before shutdown through gpedit.msc

This runs something called a script. Is a script the same as a bat file?

Cheers

[Wowbagger]

I did something like that once - I created a batch file than ran a few things, before putting the computer into hibernation. Though, it only worked if you clicked the shortcut I made for it, not if you chose "Hibernate" from the "Turn off computer" menu. Just run the Shutdown.exe built into Windows, with "-r", and possibly other parameters added, to restart.

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shutcut.php

And, of course, be careful when editing boot.ini! You don't want to leave your machine unbootable. (prepare an emergency boot method, just in case: either the Windows XP CD, a boot disk, or a bootable thumbdrive.)

[Wudang]

Hm, could you have a boot.ini on a removable bootable medium like a CD or USB stick?
Thats what I used to with a couple of OSes that did not play well with others many moons ago.