I am doing a job for my friends dad, basically he has two hard drives and has a copy of xp home on one and xp pro on the other. i have fiddled about with the ribbon cables and jumper settings but i cant get it so that when the computer starts up it gives me the black screen and a choice of which operating system to boot :-S please help

Hello,firstly were these two hard drives already in the computer before you started to fiddle?

Secondly was this computer setup for a dual boot?

he had 1 harddrive with xp pro installed, i put a copy of xp home on a blank hardive with my computer and then put it in his. and i dont know if its set up for dual boot - how do you go about that? and thanks for replying

That is not setup for a dual boot.

Have you tried logging on to either XP?

What were you trying to do?Setup a dual boot or just install a slave drive?

what he wants is one operating system to have his business stuff on and the other to have everything else. i know ur probably thinkin he can just use the second drive as extra memory but he initially wanted two seperate computers so i thought this would be bthe best option.

and i can log onto both but i have to set one to master an one to slave if there on the same ribbon and the master starts up

he wants the choice of which to boot up when her turns computer on, wat i planned to do is have leisure as one drive which would boot automatically if the business copy of xp isnt selected at boot up cus he uses lesuire more - does that make sense?

Ok you can logon on to either operating system anf they work.

Make the leisure pc hard drive master and the buisness as a slave,does that change the order of the choice menu?

i have tried that, it just loads whichever hard drive is set to master and the other drive can be found as an additional hard drive in my computer. it doesnt give the option. could it be because his hardware is old - his hdd's are up to date though