Two seperated users on one system?

[george]

Hi all,

How can I achieve the following situation:
1 PC
2 physical harddisks (say disk1 and disk2)
User1 has his own windows installation on disk1 and should be totally
oblivious of the existence of disk2 (and user2's installation.)
User2 has his own windows installation on disk2 and should equally totally
oblivious of user1's existence and installation on disk1.
So basically both users have their complete own setup on the same physical
box and cannot even see the other user's harddisk.
Apart from the license issue, which is simply having two original copies of
xp to work with, how can this be technically achieved?
(If at all possible.)
Reasons why?
Stubborn users messing up each others installs, hogging each others
diskspace, etc.
Basically, childish users, but unfortunately both with some 'weight' to
throw around, leaving me the fire fighter.

Technical suggestions/solutions are very appreciated.

Thanks
George

 

[Jesse MacDonough]

In Windows XP, install them both, one after the other, on the separate
disks. Basically, you'll boot to the CD ROM each time, and after you've
installed Windows XP the first time, it will ask if you want to overwrite
the Windows installation, you select that you want a new one, then it will
ask you where to install it. You select the other drive and install it
there.

After both installations, when the computer starts up, before it boots to
Windows, it will display a Boot Menu asking you which one you want to start.
Both will say "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" or "Home" whichever one
you have, so you really want a descriptive name for each so that they can
choose their own. That's where you must edit the boot.ini file, the text
file that produces the content for that menu screen. To do this, right
click on 'My Computer' select Properties, and go to the Advanced tab and
click the Settings button under 'Startup and Recovery'. On the top of the
dialog box, you can choose which OS will start by default after a certain
amount of time. You can also click the Edit button to manually edit the
boot.ini file. The bottom two lines of that file will have in quotes the
description you see on the Boot Menu screen. That is what you can adjust to
make more descriptive. Don't change anything before that, since it points
to the partitions where Windows is installed.

Then, select from the drop-down box (after you've saved the boot.ini file)
which Windows installation will start by default (after 30 seconds,
usually.)

BigMac

 

[george]

Thanks Jesse,

I had that part down already. (Thanks anyway)
However, this still leaves me (or rather them!) with the simple possibility
to explore BOTH disks in the system, which is what I was after to exclude in
the first place.
So they will have to restart the system in order to be able to get at their
own installation (not just logoff and logon again), because in 'their'
installation there is only their own userid!. This is good; now maybe
they'll get tired of it and start behaving!.
But, to make it even more compelling:
I don't want user1 to even SEE the physical disk in the system 'belonging'
to user2, when user1 has started the system (and vice versa).
In the setup you propose Windows Explorer will still just show you all the
disks in the system. (With all possible access possibilities that come with
it)

Any more suggestions?

Thanks
George

 

[Jerry]

Many newer BIOSes allow you to change which drive you boot from. In the
scenario you want this would have to be selected by the user during computer
start. The problem is - I don't think there is any way to hide one drive
from the other.

Did you check any of the boot managers, i.e. Partiton Magic, to see if maybe
they had a way to hide the drives?

 

[DevilsPGD]

Apart from the license issue, which is simply having two original copies of
xp to work with, how can this be technically achieved?

Personal opinion: Removeable hard drives are the way to go.

One of each of these would do the trick:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=394845&CatId=285

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=394846&CatId=285



--
There was a survey just recently that revealed the following results;

40% of women said they thought their ass was too big.
40% of women said they thought their ass was too little.
20% of women said they didn't care what their ass looked like, they were
going to stay married to him anyway.

 

[Jesse MacDonough]

OK, I hear you. Install TweakUI for each, and one of the options you have
is to hide disk drives from My Computer. I can't remember where it's under,
maybe the My Computer Icon in TweakUI. It doesn't delete the drive if you
type in the drive letter from a command prompt or the the Run.. dialog. But
it won't show up in My Computer.

Jesse