D Drive problem - installing XP after Win2K

[John Smith]

Hi,

I have an existing Win2K. After much efforts, I installed a Windows XP
Pro on another partition. But XP partition becomes Drive D. It seems to
work fine but I am conservative about this approach.

My Win2K parition becomes Drive C. If I boot Win2K, I can't see the Drive
D. I like that! But in XP, Drive C becomes a drive and Drive D becomes BOOT.
The problem is "Program Files" and Windows system directories exist in
both drive C: and D:. And I am not confident that the sharewares out there
handle this gracefully. Most programs attempts to install to drive C by
default. My questions:

1. Is it too late to make XP partition Drive C? How?

2. Is there any way to lock or write-protect Win2K partition (C?

Thanks!

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Hi,

I have an existing Win2K. After much efforts, I installed a Windows XP
Pro on another partition. But XP partition becomes Drive D. It seems to
work fine but I am conservative about this approach.

My Win2K parition becomes Drive C. If I boot Win2K, I can't see the Drive
D. I like that! But in XP, Drive C becomes a drive and Drive D becomes BOOT.
The problem is "Program Files" and Windows system directories exist in
both drive C: and D:. And I am not confident that the sharewares out there
handle this gracefully. Most programs attempts to install to drive C by
default. My questions:

1. Is it too late to make XP partition Drive C? How?

Yes, it's too late. if you want to do it, you can probably achieve it by
re-installing XP, using a 3rd party boot manager that'll hide the
existing 'C' win2k partition away from XP.

2. Is there any way to lock or write-protect Win2K partition (C?

You can use TweakUIXP to hide it (from explorer at least) but that isn't
a great idea. Actually what you have is quite normal, and should not
cause any problems with well behaved programs. May cause problems when
you forget what is where, but that's a liveware issue.

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

If Win2K and Win XP were each installed on a "primary" partition (you need a
3rd party program, such as Partition Magic, to create these), you could use
a boot manager program (System Commander) to boot to the O/S you want. The
other O/S is totally hidden, and inaccessible. Each O/S is seen as being on
Drive/partition C:.

I have 3 primary partitions:

1. Windows XP = 10 gig
2. Windows 2000 = 6 gig
3. Pure DOS = 75 meg

System Commander, Partition Magic and Drive Image 2002 are on the 3
partition and allow me to control the boot sequence, partition maintenance
and Imaging.

The partitions MUST be set up prior to installing the 2nd O/S. Use the
floppy version of Partition Magic to "make active" the partition you want to
install Win2K to. Then, during setup, make certain you direct the install to
the correct partition/drive.