Safe to duplicate a Win2000 partition for multi-boot?

[Robert Mischke]

Currently, I'm multi-booting between Win98SE and Win2000 using the
XOSL boot manager without problems. Now I'd like to add another
Win2000 installation as a test platform, so that I'd have 1x Win98 and
2x Win2000.

If I wanted a second Win98 partition, I'd just mirror the Win98
partition to another primary partition, adjust the bootmanager and
that's it. But is it safe to do the same with a Win2000 partition?

I read somewhere that there's a problem because Win2000 stores which
partitions it uses in the registry, and mirroring this to another
partition might cause problems (because the C: drive has changed). The
recommended workaround was to delete the registry key in which this
information is stored (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices),
shutting down, and mirroring after that so each Win2000 installation
will re-create this information on the next boot.

Is this safe? Is it necessary? And is there anything else to watch out
for?


Thanks,
Robert

 

[Pegasus]

Currently, I'm multi-booting between Win98SE and Win2000 using the
XOSL boot manager without problems. Now I'd like to add another
Win2000 installation as a test platform, so that I'd have 1x Win98 and
2x Win2000.

If I wanted a second Win98 partition, I'd just mirror the Win98
partition to another primary partition, adjust the bootmanager and
that's it. But is it safe to do the same with a Win2000 partition?

I read somewhere that there's a problem because Win2000 stores which
partitions it uses in the registry, and mirroring this to another
partition might cause problems (because the C: drive has changed). The
recommended workaround was to delete the registry key in which this
information is stored (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices),
shutting down, and mirroring after that so each Win2000 installation
will re-create this information on the next boot.

Is this safe? Is it necessary? And is there anything else to watch out
for?


Thanks,
Robert

As long as you instruct XOSL to hide the various partitions from each
other, you're safe.

There are a few other things you need to keep in mind:
- c:\boot.ini must always reflect the correct partition number.
- Your second Win2000 installation will have a different "partition(x)"
than the first.
- You may have to install your second copy of Win2000 in a logical
drive, because you might run out of primary partitions. XOSL can
boot into a logical drive, provided that you make the recommended
adjustments to its boot sector, probably using ptedit.exe for the job.

 

[Robert Mischke]

Hi Pegasus,

thanks for your reply.

As long as you instruct XOSL to hide the various partitions from each
other, you're safe.

There are a few other things you need to keep in mind:
- c:\boot.ini must always reflect the correct partition number.
- Your second Win2000 installation will have a different "partition(x)"
than the first.

So I have to mirror the partition, and then modify the new partition's
boot.ini before I try to boot it normally? From what you say, I
assume it would start Windows from the old partition if I din't? (ie,
loading the basic OS stub from the new partition, reading the copied
boot.ini and then proceeding to boot from the old partition as listed
in that file?)

You may have to install your second copy of Win2000 in a logical
drive, because you might run out of primary partitions. XOSL can
boot into a logical drive, provided that you make the recommended
adjustments to its boot sector, probably using ptedit.exe for the job.

I installed XOSL into a logical partition at the end of my HD - works
like a charm, and there was no manual editing required. So I have
three primary partitions available - but thanks for the hint

Robert