Registry corruption when multi-booting

[Guest]

I've multi-booted before on other machines with n
problems. On my new PC, however, it's a complete horlicks

I've a simple triple-boot configuration with XP Pr
installed in three primary NTFS partitions. Partitions On
and Two were installed from a backup image of the original
fresh XP install in partition Three

This is how the system disc (a single ATA100 drive on th
primary IDE controller) is layed out

<---Logical partition
in Extended boundary---
_________________________________________________
PRIMARY | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | | | |
One | Two | Three | | | |
| | |Data|Data|Data | Data
XP Profes. |XP Profes. |XP Profes. | | | |
__________________________________________________
<-------------------NTFS--------------------------------><-FAT32-

Only one primary is active at any one time and both th
others are always hidden ('Unknown' in 'Disk Management')

Where the weirdness comes in is that whatever I instal
or disable in one boot partition, will be reflected in th
registry of both the others - say I install Acrobat reade
in partition Three, then Acrobat will appear under 'Add o
Remove Programs' when I've rebooted into either partitio
One or Two - even though Acrobat's not been installed int
either of those partitions yet

The same with 'Device Manager' - if I disable a USB por
in only one of the partitions, it also gets disable
(red-crossed out) in both the others

I've deleted all the primaries, re-formatted, installed X
afresh, Ghosted it, re-partitioned and restored again bu
the same thing keeps happening. Also with Drive Image. Sam
thing. It's as if the other boot volumes aren't hidden t
each other but I can categorically say they are! XP's 'Dis
Management', Partition/Boot Magic 8.01 and Drive Image 7 al
say so anyway.

I've read through all the Multi-Boot advice here on MS.co
but can't see where I'm going wrong. Help!

Cheers
__
Ade

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

You haven't revealed what you are using to boot these multiple
instances. Are you using the native NT boot loader or some other
third-party tool?

If you are using the native NT boot loader, you can't really hide the
other partitions when you choose one. It sounds like you are using the
same partition for each instance you are trying to boot. Post your
boot.ini file and perhaps we can see what might be wrong. The only way
you can modify the registry in multiple instances is when all instances
are using the same Windows directory.

If you are using a third-party tool, you'll have to tell us which one,
how it is configured and how it works with your boot.ini files.

 

[Guest]

Hi Kent,
Thanks for replying (I love this place). I think I've
sorted it. It turns out that the boot.ini in each partition was
identical:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

....because, fool me, that, of course, was what it was when the originally
installed partition was imaged - I'd partitioned _after_ imaging it.
('Boot Magic 8' is the boot manager I've been using, btw).

I've gone into each of the boot.ini's '..partition(x)..' now, changed it to the
appropriate number (1, 2 or 3) and things are staying put as they should
and there's no registry sharing going on that I can see. Anyway, I'm going
to delete the whole lot and restore again just to be sure.

I've downloaded a boot.ini editing utility 'EditBINI' (freeware from www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html)
that'll apparently allow me to check/edit the boot.ini files in each case
with (I hope) a DOS floppy - that's after I've restored all the partitions again
but before booting into any of them.

I don't know why I've not come across this before though - I've been partitioning
all over the show for years and I'd have thought that Ghost/Drive Image would
have done it for me - not this time apparently...

If anyone's interested, I found a wonderful resource on multi-booting
shenanigans over at: www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

So, I think I've solved it (famous last words)...

Cheers,
___
Ade

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

That's the problem with utilities that don't hide partitions. I use BING
and hide partitions so when I copy one I don't have to edit boot.ini.