Does Win XP Pro have to be installed within the first 4 GBytes?

[Guest]

I have read that Windows NT (or at least its boot related files) has to be
installed within the first 4 GBytes to be able to boot without bootstrapping
from another Windows partition. Is this true for Windows XP Professional as
well, or could I have a number of individually bootable Windows XP partitions
that could be chosen via e.g. BootMagic or PartitionMagic (by changing active
partition)?

Thanks for any help.

Wilbour

 

[philo]

I have read that Windows NT (or at least its boot related files) has to be
installed within the first 4 GBytes to be able to boot without bootstrapping
from another Windows partition. Is this true for Windows XP Professional as
well, or could I have a number of individually bootable Windows XP partitions
that could be chosen via e.g. BootMagic or PartitionMagic (by changing active
partition)?

XP does not have to be installed within the first 4 gigs...
AFAIK you can install it on any partition....HOWEVER...
the boot files will always end up on your first (fat/32 or NTFS)
primary partition (or C: drive)

 

[Guest]

Hi philo,

Thanks for your response. Sorry for keeping you waiting for my reply. I
had some problems with my computer, and lost track of our discussion.

What I want to accomplish is to have Windows XP Pro installed in two
different partitions on the same harddisk at the same time, and run them, one
at the time, completely independent of each other. They would each have a
complete set of all the boot files, so neither would have to boot through the
other, using its boot.ini file (sometimes called bootstrapping). I would
instead select which one of them to run by changing the active partition flag
in the Master Boot Record (MBR) in the first sector of the disk, which is not
a part of any of the partitions.

I have made a second partition using PartitionMagic, and copied all the
content from the original partition to this new partition using Retrospect
Express. This way the second partition is supposed to have all the boot
files.

My problem is that the second partition doesn't boot by itself even when it
is the active partition, despite it does boot when I use bootstrapping from
the first partition.

Question:

Do you have any idea why the second partition doesn't boot by itself when it
is the active partition (independent of whether the first partition is hidden
or not)?

Thanks for your help

Wilbour