2 HDD,2 O/S's; 1 w/ XP, 1 w/XP 64bit. (system is 64 bit ready) how do I do it?

[Zoso]

I Have an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ cpu and an MSI K8T neo 6702 Mainboard. I'm currently running XP home on a 120gb Seagate SATA HDD, and I want to put 64bit XP evaluation version I downloaded from Windows website on a Western Digital 40gb IDE HDD.
How do I do that? Virtual PC from windows doesn't support 64bit XP.
I would be very grateful with any help I can get.

[Zoso]

Haven't had any hit's on my problem so maybe i should elaborate; it's all on one computer and...i know how to install the HDD's and the O/S's, etc...its just an issue of how do i switch between the O/S's w/out having to re-boot into cmos and change the boot device so as to boot from the desired drive and OS...
it is obvious that switching between 32 bit and 64 bit can't be just as simple a click of the mouse in one O/S or the other to switch back and forth...but if there is anyway to do so w/out re-designating boot device/parameters everytime i turn it on would be most helpful

[Silver-Fox]

Hi Zoso

there are probably differnet ways of doing this but this is how i do it.
If you set you Hard drives up as SATA = Primary Master and the IDE = Primary Slave. This should allow you to boot straight to your XP Home edition OS, once you confirm you can do that you will need to install your 64 bit OS on the IDE drive (Not C: ) after the install has finished and you reboot the PC, your PC will go through its POST and then show you a screen asking you which OS you would like to use, this is where you select either XP Home or 64 bit. If you dont make a selection the default selected OS will boot when the timer runs out (30 secs i think) this will save you changing the boot order, You will still have to restart your computer each time you want to change OS.

Hope this helps, and welcome to TZ

[phishhead]

good advice silverfox. that should get you going fine. also just to add you can go to start run and type msconfig. from there you can edit your boot.ini if need be. I know 30 secs is along time so I dumped mine to 10 secs when I was dual booting.

[Zoso]

Thank you Silver-Fox and phishhead

Very grateful for your help guys....I kinda thought it would be that (relatively) simple, i just wasnt aware there was a OS choosing interface screen in XP during boot up if you have 2 OS's...
One more silly question...I've only built 3 computers myself, and one thing ive never had to setup or worry about is primary master drive and primary slave drive and secondary master, secondary slave when building a system. ive always just had one HDD, and the bios/cmos always just seems to choose that itself, default or whatever... (by the way, I know how to configure master/slave options with the jumpers on the drives, etc...)
anyway, how do i make sure both HDD's are configured as you pointed out; the SATA as primary master and the IDE as primary slave? is that an option in cmos ive just overlooked when setting a machine up?
Thanks again,
Zoso

[FastGame]

Both your HD's are on separate controllers, one SATA and one IDE. Both will be set as master in your bios if you choose.

Set both your drives as master.