pilksterman30 said:
Currently have a system with XP Pro and I would like
to install the same version of XP Pro on a separate
hard drive in the same system. If I run the XP setup
program off the CD will the original XP Pro installation
be affected in any way.
If the "old" WinXP OS is seen by the setup program
during setup, it will make a dual-boot system for you.
This might be what you want, but the 2nd WinXP will
always call its own partition "Local Disk (D
". This
may not botther you, but it may in the future. The way
around this would be to install WinXP on the 2nd HD
while the 1st HD is disconnected (i.e. data cable
unplugged). Then the 2nd WinXP will call its partition
"Local Disk (C
" when it's running.
Since the OSes will be on separate HDs, you could
dual-boot by using the BIOS or by using the WinXP
boot manager (ntldr).
Using the BIOS:
Most modern BIOSes allow you to change the HD
boot order via keyboard command during the initial
boot procedure (refer to your owner's manual). The
*default* HD boot order for such BIOSes is:
Master, ch. 0,
Slave, ch. 0,
Master, ch. 1,
Slave, ch. 1.
This is why people make their OS's HD the Master on
IDE channel 0 (the "primary" channel) - so that it's
guaranteed to get control for booting. But this is just
the *default* HD boot order.
The BIOS looks to the 1st HD that it finds in this order,
and then tries to boot from that HD. If you rearrange
the HD boot order, you can control which HD boots,
and thus which OS boots. If you have installed each
OS while its HD was the only HD connected in the PC,
just an adjustment in the HD boot order in the BIOS will
accomplish the switch between OSes. Using this
method, you don't have to touch the boot.ini file, and
the machine will be doing a single-boot procedure.
Using ntldr and the boot.ini file:
The boot.ini file at C:\boot.ini controls the OS boot
loading, which is executed by ntldr. The boot.ini file
has a default entry which is used if there is only one
OS. If there are 2 or more OSes, there is one entry
under the line "[operating systems]" for each of the
available OSes. You can manually edit the boot.ini file
via Notepad or by run/msconfig/Boot.ini. In the latter
utility, you can have the OS entries in boot.ini set up
automatically by pressing the "Check all boot paths"
button. (You may have to set the seconds for timeout
manually.) At boot-up, ntldr will display the text part of
the entries in the boot.ini file as a menu on the screen
for you to select an OS from. Obviously, the contents
of the text portion (the part between quotes) is arbitrary,
and you can set those to be whatever makes sense
for you.
Cloning the "old" OS:
If you have parameter settings, files, and installed
programs on the "old" OS that you would like to
duplicate on the "new" OS, you can just clone the old
OS to the 2nd HD. An easy and cheap way to do this
would be to download a cloning utility from the Web
for a free trial period. Such a utility, that was developed
expressly for XP (and NT and 2K) is Casper XP. You
can download a free 30-day trial copy from:
www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp/ . This utility
doesn't require Microsoft's .NET Framework to be
installed (as Ghost does), and it can clone a single
partition from several on the source HD and put it
among several existing partitions on the destination
HD (which True Image cannot do). And... it runs entirely
in Windows - no restart before or after the cloning is
required.
As with all NT/2K/XP clones, don't let it see the
"parent" OS during its very first startup. So first
disconnect the source HD, then boot the new HD
(which will automatically move to the head of the
HD boot order, and since its boot files think it is
the boot files of the original HD, the new HD will
boot up the clone automatically). Then shut down
and re-connect the original HD. Thereafter, the
clone, when it's running, can "see" its "parent" and
it won't get confused.
Now you'll have to adjust the boot.ini file(s) for
dual-booting. If the original HD's boot files are to
control the booting, adjust the boot.ini file in that
HD. If the new HD's boot files are to control the
booting, adjust the boot.ini file in the new HD.
Just be sure that the partition that contains the
boot files is a Primary partition and that it is marked
"active". You can check this with Disk Management
(rt-clk My Computer/Manage/Disk Management).
By rt-clking the graphic representation of a partition
and seeing if the selection "Mark Partition as Active"
is grayed out, you can tell that it's already "active".
This "active" partition will get control if it's on the
HD that is at the head of the HD boot order. That
partition's bootl.ini file will then control the selection
of OSes to boot. There can only be one Primary
partition marked "active" on a HD, and Casper XP
will do this automatically for you, as well as automatically
copy over the boot sector and MBR (if needed).
As above, you can edit the boot.ini file manually
or automatically to make the added entry that
represents the "other" OS. Ten seconds for the
timeout value will usually give you enough time to
decide which entry to select.
If you want to know more about the syntax of the
entries in the boot.ini file, google for my usenet
postings earlier this year under "meaning of rdisk()
in boot.ini".
*TimDaniels*
