Xp Dual Boot

[Guest]

I have installed Xp pro on a partition which takes up half of my hard disk, which installs happily as Drive C. On installing a second copy onto the free space, as a second partition, this installs fine, but on selecting it from the boot option, the windows drive is drive D (with C being seen as the first installation). Is there any way that the drive letter assignment for the second installation can be swapped, so both installations see their windows folders as C: ?

 

[Jerry]

No.

I have installed Xp pro on a partition which takes up half of my hard

disk, which installs happily as Drive C. On installing a second copy onto
the free space, as a second partition, this installs fine, but on selecting
it from the boot option, the windows drive is drive D (with C being seen as
the first installation). Is there any way that the drive letter assignment
for the second installation can be swapped, so both installations see their
windows folders as C: ?

 

[I'm Dan]

I have installed Xp pro on a partition which takes up half of
my hard disk, which installs happily as Drive C. On installing
a second copy onto the free space, as a second partition, this
installs fine, but on selecting it from the boot option, the
windows drive is drive D (with C being seen as the first
installation). Is there any way that the drive letter assignment
for the second installation can be swapped, so both
installations see their windows folders as C: ?

Yes, if you use a third-party boot manager. Any run-of-the-mill third-party
boot manager will let multiple OS's exist as alternate 'C' partitions while
(optionally) hiding the non-booted partition so they can't see each other.
The boot manager included with XP cannot do that. Be aware that installing
a third-party boot manager will necessitate reinstalling your second OS
because once installed as 'D', you're stuck with 'D'.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Dan, clearly both of you are right, you cannot do it wit Xp alone. I have managed to do it using Partition Magic to hide the first installation before doing the second (as you suggested). A careful but logical sequence of hiding and unhiding, and moving drives gave me the result I wanted. No doubt a third party boot manager would have done the same, but I was trying to get the Xp multiple boot to handle it once set up. Thanks for your inpu
John

 

[dmac]

I've had 2 xp systems on separate partitions w/o third party boot managers.
just modified the xp boot loader file, but I don't remember the actual file
setup now.
these links might help-especially the first. its the boot loader one

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;289022

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306559

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315233

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305873


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dmac
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I have installed Xp pro on a partition which takes up half of my hard

disk, which installs happily as Drive C. On installing a second copy onto
the free space, as a second partition, this installs fine, but on selecting
it from the boot option, the windows drive is drive D (with C being seen as
the first installation). Is there any way that the drive letter assignment
for the second installation can be swapped, so both installations see their
windows folders as C: ?