Protecting XP from XP

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Guest

Hello!

I have a computer with two disk drives, one loaded with XP Home and the
other with XP Pro. How can I ensure that when I boot up on Home that it
cannot modify the contents of the drive with Pro, and vice versa? Does Home
and/or Pro have strong enough security to protect its contents from another
copy of WinXP OS? Are there any settings or attributes that can be enabled
to accomplish this?

I expect that both the Home and Pro images could be wiped out by
partitioning or formatting software. But, short of that, I'm more concerned
with making sure that one cannot modify the other.

Thanks in advance -- Dave
 
It all depends upon how you initially set up your computer.

If the 2 copies of Windows are on primary DOS partitions, they can be
totally hidden from one another by using a competent boot manager program,
such as System Commander. What happens in one will NOT touch the other. Only
a major hardware failure will throw a monkey wrench in the works.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Richard,

Thanks for the response. Yes, both images are loaded on the primary DOS
partition on their respective drives. Does the boot manager program secure
the "other" XP drive by encrypting its contents, or, does it do something
dynamically to block access to the other drive at a hardware or file system
level?

Thanks again -- Dave
 
Richard,

One other question. From your previous response, should I assume that the
different XP images can see and modify the contents of the drive with the
other XP image? I'm surprised there's not security at the file system level
to prevent this, or that you can't block/disconnet the other drive!

Thanks again for your help -- Dave
 
You can set up System Commander to hide primary partitions that are NOT
being booted. Therefore, if you have 4 primary partition, on each of two
drives, when you boot up into one of them the other seven will be hidden -
if you configure System Commander to do so.

I have gotton malware on one system and the others have never been touched -
yet! Same for when I got a virus about 1 1/2 years ago. It destroyed my
Windows XP partition but I was able to reboot into Windows 2000, go on-line,
and get the cleaners I needed to attack the infection in Windows XP. Windows
2000 was clean! (-:

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
If you are not hiding the partitions from one another at the bios level,
which is what I suppose System Commander does, one system partition can
access another system partition. What infects one ( say corrupts all .exe
files) will corrupt the second system partition also.

About 3-4 years ago I got a virus/malware that deleted all.mp3 files from my
computer. It hit songs on three different "common" partitions. Everything
was gone. When I rebooted into Windows 2000 I was pleased that the .mp3
files were unscathed on that partition.

Another time I got a bad download of a small utility from some website in
bum f**k, Egypt. I ran the installer and a DOS window poped up with
something similar to "sit back and watch as your hard drive is deleted".
Then file names started to roll down the window. I wasn't too concerned
because I had just created a Drive Image about 2 hours before, so I let it
go for a few minutes.

When I tried to reboot into Windows XP, sure enough - the system was toast.
Again, I could get into Windows 2000 just fine and do anything I would
normally do from by backup system.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Richard,

You've been a lot of help -- hope you have room for one more question.

Do you know if programs like System Commander install themselves (or parts
of themselves) on each of the partitions, or does it reside on one specific
partition? For my purposees, it would help if it ran from one specific
partition without modifying the others.

Thanks again, Dave
 
I am using an older version of System Commander (if it ain't broke, don't
fix it). It is a DOS program. I created a small 75 meg partition and
installed DOS 6.22 on it. I then installed System Commander to this
partition. I also installed a copy of the DOS version of Partition Magic
8.01 and Drive Image 2002 on this partition.

On my main computer I can boot into either DOS, Windows XP or Windows 2000.
They are all hidden from one another.

The newer version of System Commander installs directly through Windows - to
a Windows partition (I think), so there is no need for the DOS partition any
longer. Again, I did say - I think! (-:

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
System commander loads at two locations. The first is the master boot
record area of the first hard drive. Installing an operating system may
wipe it out. Restorable with System Commander's boot diskettes. The second
is the primary, active partition visible at the time on the same hard drive.
The first provides which local partition to boot from on the hard drive
where that master boot record is located. Subsequent hard drive booting
choices are determined by the files loaded from the second instance noted
above. Also loaded is the complete menu for System Commander which includes
a partition manager as well. After the boot manager is used to choose the
partition for booting, it voids system memory completely.
System Commander only loads its files on one partition. No other files are
loaded to any other partition, nor any other partition modified in any way
during its install.
In the 2nd instance noted above, system commander will boot like an OS. Do
its thing. When loading the OS where SC's files are located. Copy this
partitions boot files back to this partition, exit memory, and the PC will
boot from those files. This is referred to as a multi-OS partition by
system commander. Booting from other partitions is similar, except that
there is no copying of system boot files to the selected partition for
booting. The other bootable partitions remain unmodified unless you hide
them with your boot option selection but does nothing to their filesystems.
 
Good description of how it does it's thing.

Years ago I guess I may have read how the technology works, but it has been
so reliable and trouble free that I never have to delve into the program for
anything, except choosing which O/S I want to boot to.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
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