Running a second copy of the same OS, just for emergencies

[mm]

Running a second copy of the same OS, just for emergencies?

My ex-gf has this virus problem (which I asked about in another post)
and I realize I have always had dual boot, so I could remove viruses
in winxP from my Win98SE. But some of the new av's won't run on
win98, and my new computer mobo might not be able to run win98 anyhow,
and the question occurs to me, why not have dual boot with another
copy of the XP, installed from the same CD with the same product key.

Since all the hardware is the same, MS won't even notice, right??

If it did notice, would it object? IIRC the license permits
installation on one computer, but doesn't prohibit dual installation
on that computer.

One could do all his work in the first one and save the other one for
times when the first one won't boot.

Or is this not worth the effort? Since there are AV Rescue CD's
which one boots from and they say they can easily remove the viruses.
And maybe all the other boot problems can be solved in Safe Mode.

 

[Bert Hyman]

In mm

Or is this not worth the effort? Since there are AV Rescue CD's
which one boots from and they say they can easily remove the viruses.
And maybe all the other boot problems can be solved in Safe Mode.

The A/V rescue CDs might be an easier solution, assuming that the one you
choose will actually boot or run on your hardware (they won't have drivers
for any strange hardware on your box).

But, you'll have to either download and burn a new CD often to have a good
chance of it actually finding the brand new virus that brought your system
down, or simply wait 'til you're infected before downloading it on a clean
system.

Then, there's still the chance that a nasty virus might have done enough
damage to your system that even after cleaning there won't be enough of
Windows left to run.

A world of choices, all of them bad.

Better is to have the best real-time protection you can find and practice
safe computing and avoid getting infected in the first place.

 

[mm]

It is to me. Not much effort and gives you easy access to the other drive.
You can even copy - plain old copy - the main OS if you want to.

One can just xcopy or Windows Explorer copy the files from one
partition to the other?

I don't need to make a image, and copy that in?

In my case, XP#2 is a minimal one; i.e., no drivers, no inet, nothing extra
except an imaging program so I can easily access images made of XP #1 when
using XP #1.

Well, I like your answer better than Bert's because it assures me
paying attention and not cray.

But bothare valuable. As far as virus-protection goes, Bert, I've
always had current virus defs/sigs and afaik, I'm never had a virus
(well, except once right before my eyes, something was making loads of
files with the same name or consective names and I was able to delete
them faster than they were made and within 3 or 4 minutes I deleted
them all, and that was the end of it. Maybe that was a virus.)

Thank you both.

 

[mm]

You can plain copy everything except the "System Volume Information" folder.

I know you said this once already, but I appreciate your saying it
again!

Personally, I prefer making images,

Then I do too. (What's the smily for a suck-up?)