Two installations of Windows XP on the same machine?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grant Anderson
  • Start date Start date
Grant Anderson said:
After I've done this, will Windows still label the first drive the system
drive?

My aim is to remove any reliance Windows may have on the first drive,
because I don't trust it at the moment.

Cheers,
Grant
Click to expand...

There is some confusing advice in this thread.
You have installed a second installation of XP to a second drive.
The second installation is installed to D and relies on the boot information
and the boot files on C.
Remove C and XP will still think that it is on D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MBR.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_sector
The computer must have an active partition telling the computer where the
boot files are located.
Installing a second system on a second drive results in two booting systems,
but the active partition and the boot files are still on the first drive.
Moving the boot files to the second drive will not let the second drive boot
if the first drive is removed (lost) or the boot order switched in the BIOS.
Fixboot must be run to put a boot sector on the second drive or fixboot run
after switching drives.
Boot.ini also has to have the correct rdisk and partition information.

You could have made the second drive the first drive to boot and installed
XP.
This would have made XP on C.
The old XP would have been accessible by adding a line to boot.ini or
changing the boot order in the BIOS.
 
Grant said:
After I've done this, will Windows still label the first drive the
system drive?

My aim is to remove any reliance Windows may have on the first drive,
because I don't trust it at the moment.

Cheers,
Grant
Click to expand...

On second thought, I think your best course of action is to swap the
drive cabling/jumpering to make the new drive the 1st hard drive, then
do a repair install of XP on the new drive to change the OS references
from D: to C:. It will be less confusing and if the old drive does crap
out it will not effect your Windows operation at all. While fixboot will
deal with the MBR and boot files it will not change registry references
for other OS aspects that would still be pointing to D:.

Steve N.
 
Ron said:
There is some confusing advice in this thread.
You have installed a second installation of XP to a second drive.
The second installation is installed to D and relies on the boot information
and the boot files on C.
Remove C and XP will still think that it is on D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MBR.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_sector
The computer must have an active partition telling the computer where the
boot files are located.
Installing a second system on a second drive results in two booting systems,
but the active partition and the boot files are still on the first drive.
Moving the boot files to the second drive will not let the second drive boot
if the first drive is removed (lost) or the boot order switched in the BIOS.
Fixboot must be run to put a boot sector on the second drive or fixboot run
after switching drives.
Boot.ini also has to have the correct rdisk and partition information.

You could have made the second drive the first drive to boot and installed
XP.
This would have made XP on C.
The old XP would have been accessible by adding a line to boot.ini or
changing the boot order in the BIOS.
Click to expand...

Your absolutely right, Ron.

Steve N.
 
Steve said:
On second thought, I think your best course of action is to swap the
drive cabling/jumpering to make the new drive the 1st hard drive, then
do a repair install of XP on the new drive to change the OS references
from D: to C:. It will be less confusing and if the old drive does crap
out it will not effect your Windows operation at all. While fixboot will
deal with the MBR and boot files it will not change registry references
for other OS aspects that would still be pointing to D:.
Click to expand...

So I can use fixboot to put an MBR on the physical drive containing D:
(which only has one partition) and a boot sector on the partition?
Everything's quite happy pointing to D: at the moment, as D: was the
install drive.

I seem to be able to set HDD1 as tbe boot drive rather than HDD0 in
BIOS. With any luck, that'll let me boot off the D:, and have it still
called D:, once I get all this done, without messing with the insides of
the machine.


So Fixboot only makes a drive bootable, and does nothing else to the
data on the drive?

Cheers,
Grant
 
Ron said:
There is some confusing advice in this thread.
You have installed a second installation of XP to a second drive.
The second installation is installed to D and relies on the boot information
and the boot files on C.
Remove C and XP will still think that it is on D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MBR.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_sector
The computer must have an active partition telling the computer where the
boot files are located.
Installing a second system on a second drive results in two booting systems,
but the active partition and the boot files are still on the first drive.
Moving the boot files to the second drive will not let the second drive boot
if the first drive is removed (lost) or the boot order switched in the BIOS.
Fixboot must be run to put a boot sector on the second drive or fixboot run
after switching drives.
Boot.ini also has to have the correct rdisk and partition information.

You could have made the second drive the first drive to boot and installed
XP.
This would have made XP on C.
The old XP would have been accessible by adding a line to boot.ini or
changing the boot order in the BIOS.
Click to expand...

So if I altered the BIOS boot order before installing on (current)D:,
Windows would've installed itself on the (now)D: but made it C:? Or is
it the physical position in the machine that makes it C:?

If it's just the BIOS, I wonder if it would be worth the hassle of
reinstalling again to make the desired boot drive the C:. The Disk
Management program says that the (current)C: is the System drive and the
D: is the Boot drive - would reinstalling the D: as C: fix that and
recombine Boot and System?

What does the System partition have that the Boot partition doesn't, and
is there any way to shift it?

Cheers,
Grant
 
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