dual boot from 2 nonRAID SATA-Sil3112

RPSFRPSF
edited May 2010 in Hardware
I have an old Intel board D845EBT2 with a Sil3112 SATA RAID controller. My goal was to dual boot Windows 7 and Server 2003.
Bios is set for boot from SATA but RAID is disabled.
I had one drive plugged in to the Primary SATA port and installed Win7.
I then plugged in the second drive and installed Server 2003.
Computer hangs on boot when trying to identify drives if both are plugged in. Obviously each one is set to boot. I cannot figure out how to have Win7 plugged in as Primary act as the controlling drive to bring up the boot.ini adn let me select which drive/system to boot from.
Is this possible or do I have to start from scratch, creating a primary and secondary partition utilizing both drives and then installing S2003 followed by Win7?

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2010
    It sounds like the master boot records on both drives are totally conflicting.

    I would say the easiest (not to mention fastest) solution is indeed to start anew with both drives online as you wondered.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited May 2010
    It's always best to install the oldest version of Windows first. A lot of times the Windows boot manager won't recognize a newer version of Windows and set up the dual boot properly. Install Server 2003 first, then Windows 7 and it should work out better for you.

    You should be able to plug both drives in. Install Windows 2003 to one drive then install Windows 7 to the other drive. The Windows 7 installer should recognize there's a Windows 2003 install and configure it's boot loader to give you the option between 2k3 and 7. You just need to be careful to select the correct drive when installing Windows 7 so you don't overwrite your Windows 2003 drive.
  • RPSFRPSF
    edited May 2010
    Thanks to all for your advice. From here and a couple of other forums I understood that it is best to get all drives attached and recognized by the SATA load first and then install the OS, older then newer. I kept reading and got lucky with EasyBCD version2beta. It was able to reconfigure the BCD without any resinstalls. Also found very useful descriptions of this process on NeoSmart and great descriptions at:
    http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html
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