Dual Boot 2 XP Pro's

September 3, 2007

I am reformatting my PC for use by my wife and daughter. I would like to have

two entirely separate XP Pro installations on the one machine and I was

thinking of doing a dual boot, one XP Pro for my wife, one for my daughter

(as anyone with kids knows, they download a world of crap, load down the PC

with all sorts of questionable software, and have poor judgment selecting Web

sites to visit and software to install). Question 1: what is the best way to

do this, or is it a good idea at all? Question 2: is there a better way to

achieve the same result (Virtual machines?). Question 3: what about

licensing? Do I need two copies of XP or can I install the same copy on one

machine twice? Thanks.

September 3, 2007

Re: Dual Boot 2 XP Pro's

Ron,

This question was asked in this newsgroup within the past 3-4 days:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.general&mid=4da60d63-4951-47a8-93ea-09f3424171c6

--

Newbie Coder

(It's just a name)

"RonMcCullough" <RonMcCullough@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:DD2A865A-B254-4D56-980C-4A75ABAB1C9A@microsoft.com...

> I am reformatting my PC for use by my wife and daughter. I would like to have

> two entirely separate XP Pro installations on the one machine and I was

> thinking of doing a dual boot, one XP Pro for my wife, one for my daughter

> (as anyone with kids knows, they download a world of crap, load down the PC

> with all sorts of questionable software, and have poor judgment selecting Web

> sites to visit and software to install). Question 1: what is the best way to

> do this, or is it a good idea at all? Question 2: is there a better way to

> achieve the same result (Virtual machines?). Question 3: what about

> licensing? Do I need two copies of XP or can I install the same copy on one

> machine twice? Thanks.

September 3, 2007

Re: Dual Boot 2 XP Pro's

Strict conformity with the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA)

would say that you need 2 WinXP licenses (i.e. 2 installation CDs).

But if you decide cheat, no one will catch you. The easiest way is

to make and activate one installation, then make and activate another

installation on another hard drive while the first hard drive is dis-

connected. If you have to call Microsoft to explain why you're

making a second installation from the same CD, tell the agent that

you accidentally re-formatted the first installation. (Your nose will

grow 1/4" longer.) Then, with both hard drives connected, you can

control which hard drive gets control at startup by entering the BIOS

(see your User Manual for details), and set one hard drive or the

other to have top priority in the Hard Drive Boot Order. The OS on

that hard drive will boot up, and the running OS will see the other

OS's partition as just a data partition. Each OS, WHEN IT IS

RUNNING, will call its own partition "C:" and the other OS's

partition "D:", but as long as you don't make any shortcuts which

reference the other partition, this is of no concern.

If you have access to cloning software, you can also just make one

installation and then clone it to the 2nd hard drive. This doesn't

require you to lie to anybody. This is best done with 2 hard drives

since the clone shouldn't be allowed to "see" its parent OS when

the clone is started up for the firs time. There are several cloning

utilities on the market, the best known being Ghost, True Image,

Casper, and BootItNG. Hard drive manufacturers also have cloning

utilities on their websites for free download that will work only with

hard drives of their own make. You can use the BIOS to select

which hard drive controls booting, or you can add an entry to the

boot.ini file of one of the partitions to enable dual-booting. But how

to do that requires an understanding of the boot.ini syntax and that

is a topic for another thread.

If you must work just with one hard drive, you can use make one

installation on one partition, and then after activating the 1st installation,

do a 2nd installation on another partition, and tell the installer to include

the 1st OS as a dual-boot option. (This also requires you to lie to the

MS agent.) At startup, the boot manager will present a menu on the

screen to let you choose one OS or the other to boot. When the 1st

OS runs, it will call its own partition "C:" and the other partition "D:",

and when the 2nd OS runs, it will call its own partition "D:" and the

1st OS's partition "C:". If you later wish to remove the 1st OS, it's

quite alright to let the 2nd OS continue to call its own partition "D:".

The downside to the above methods is that a virus that gets into one

OS's partition can also damage the other partition since both partitions

are visible to it. I *believe* that this problem does not exist if you use

virtual machine software that makes each OS think that it's running alone

in its own machine. The downside of virtual machines is that they're

slower than real machines, and they take more RAM. So if you're

running an elderly PC with 250MB of RAM, virtual machines may

be painfully slow. MS offers a freebie called "Virtual PC", and

VMWare offers "VM Workstation", also a freebie. Read up on

them before jumping in.

Another solution which sidesteps both problems is to use removeable

hard drives, sometimes called "mobile racks" or "drive caddies". These

take up a 5 1/2" expansion bay on your PC, and they allow you to

change the hard drive by sliding one out and sliding in another one before

startup. Kingwin makes several lines of "mobile racks", and I've been

using one for several years, and I'm happy with it. They also have extra

trays for your 2nd and 3rd and etc. hard drives. Kingwin makes them

for SATA as well as the older PATA hard drives. See:

http://kingwin.com/mobileracks.asp .

If you have SATA hard drives, Kingwin makes external enclosures for

those which have their own power supply modules and cooling fans:

These use eSATA cables to connect to the PC, so you make need an

adaptor on the back of your PC to connect to a SATA connector on

your PC's motherboard. Since you can boot from a SATA hard drive,

you can use these enclosures to enable switching between OSes. (This

is *unlike* external enclosures which use a USB connection to the

motherboard, and from which most motherboards cannot boot.)

Here is Kingwin's eSATA-only enclosure:

http://kingwin.com/product_pages/jt35ebk.asp

Here is a source of SATA/eSATA adaptors:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/external-sata-solutions.htm

Here are a couple sources of eSATA cables:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/sata-cables-shielded.htm

http://www.svc.com/esata-cable.html

So consider what you have and what hassles and/or expenses you're

willing to endure and whether you want to teach your daughter to lie,

and get back to us when you've made some decisions.

*TimDaniels*

"RonMcCullough" wrote:

>I am reformatting my PC for use by my wife and daughter. I would like to have