[High T. Moonweed]

Hi - I just registered moments ago in hopes that I could obtain a clearer perspective on what my options are for installing a second operating system. I never tried this before & don't want to screw anything up (obviously). I realize that I may not find myself liking the second OS, but I still would like to give it ago in the most risk-free manner. I did look around for awhile to see if my specific question was answered already, but I didn't see one that addressed my specific situation - so I hope I'm not asking something that has been already answered in the past.

I have Windows XP Home Edition installed on my 80 GB C Drive which is quite full. I also have 3 other drives, one of which is 200 Gigs & is virtually unused because I just got it for X-mas. I would ideally like to avoid reinstalling XP if I can & try installing the second OS (which is also a windows based OS) onto this free drive, however, I'm not sure what the pros & cons to this method would be. If someone could give me a few tips, ideas, warnings, recomendations I would truly appreciate it.

Thanks

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Although I've never done this, and Microsoft says it's a bad idea...

I know for a fact it can be done. Although it's more tricky than installing it on a second partition inside the same harddrive as the first OS.

I'll have to research it however.

But I can tell you this much.. Once you have the OS installed on the second HDD; ( before doing that, you must HIDE the partion for the first OS. Partition magic can do this. Also considre the GDISK dos command from norton ghost )

start by hiding the first OS, then install the second OS. Once the second OS is installed, theoretically it should boot up to only that one.

Hide the second OS, unhide the first OS, mark the partition for the first OS as ACTIVE, boot ur first os, and install a boot menu. PQ BootMagic is excellent.

You'll have to tell your boot menu however to hide the drives on the first hdd if ur os on the second hdd is to be detected. you must hide ALL partitions on the first harddrive ( that's what i read ) when you want to boot the second OS

to boot the first OS, just tell the boot menu to hide the second OS partition, and it should work..

Again, i have to research this more, so give me a few days... Unless someone else already knows the answer

Edited by Vaillant, 09 January 2006 - 05:37 PM.

[Vaillant]

Although I've never done this, and Microsoft says it's a bad idea...

I know for a fact it can be done. Although it's more tricky than installing it on a second partition inside the same harddrive as the first OS.

I'll have to research it however.

But I can tell you this much.. Once you have the OS installed on the second HDD; ( before doing that, you must HIDE the partion for the first OS. Partition magic can do this. Also considre the GDISK dos command from norton ghost )

start by hiding the first OS, then install the second OS. Once the second OS is installed, theoretically it should boot up to only that one.

Hide the second OS, unhide the first OS, mark the partition for the first OS as ACTIVE, boot ur first os, and install a boot menu. PQ BootMagic is excellent.

You'll have to tell your boot menu however to hide the drives on the first hdd if ur os on the second hdd is to be detected. you must hide ALL partitions on the first harddrive ( that's what i read ) when you want to boot the second OS

to boot the first OS, just tell the boot menu to hide the second OS partition, and it should work..

Again, i have to research this more, so give me a few days... Unless someone else already knows the answer

Edited by Vaillant, 09 January 2006 - 05:37 PM.

[dsenette]

wy are you wanting to have a dual xp system? from your first post your reasoning is unclear....just trying to figure out what you want to get out of this....so that we can figure out what you need to do

[High T. Moonweed]

Thanks for your very well written instructions, Vaillant! If you find anything out in the course of your research please let me know.

And to answer your question, Dsenette. I just need to check out the developments in the current Vista beta. I just want to screw around with it for a few weeks & then uninstall it - clearing out my C Drive would take alot of time that I don't have. I heard conflicting reports about whether or not this could be done & I know that it's possible with certain non-microsoft OS's - Microsoft peeps warn against it - but there's plenty of things that they say isn't possible when it really is. So, I figured that I would give some decent sounding advice a try since I still have a drive that's empty right now.

Thanks again, Vaillant & Dsenette.

High T. Moonweed

[dsenette]

well...as a quick fix...do you have a spare hard drive? you could always just swap out drives when you wanna play with vista

[Vaillant]

Yeah, That would be far simpler, and safer for ur fully functional XP

It what I would do, to avoid a multi-boot nightmare

[gerryf]

Are you sure you really want to do this?

First, Vista is BETA

Second, unless you are a beta tester, it is not legal for you to do so.

Assuming you are a beta tester...

Third, dual booting vista and xp is different than dual booting other Windows versions, since Vista uses a different bootloader than other versions of Windows and will also rewrite several files used by XP to load. After removing vista, you will need to restore these files, and repair the master boot record.

The process is not hard, but since this is beta, it could break something.

If you really want to procede, simply install vista to the second drive when it asks.

When it comes time to remove it,

Open command.com in your Windows XP (start > run, type
cmd
<enter>

navigate to the root directory

type
cd boot
<enter>

type
fixntfs -xp -all
<enter>

Reboot

This should get you back to a single boot--BUT, you will still be running with Windows VISTA beta files at startup


You actually can continue this way, but give it is BETA, I'd go back to the originals, by copying ntldr and ntdetect.com to your root (C: drive)
and overwrite what is there (the Vista versions)