Virtual HDs

[luke]

Tried your sugestion again SP2 only and it worked OK without asking for the 28 missing .dll, .exe, .icm

[congo]

Oh Dear,

My plan may be flawed, but I think it works. You should be able to install Windows to another partition and you get a menu to choose which XP installation you wish to boot from during the boot process.

Don't quote me, but I think that any XP installed onto any of your primary partitions will be listed in the first windows load screen and you can make the choice at that point.

The name of each OS as it appears in the boot menu can be changed by editiing the c:\boot.ini file similarly to this......... (this is not exact, but you can see how I changed the name in the second OS entry so I can tell which is which),

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS="nLite XP Pro SP2" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

[luke]

"....Oooo Dear, maybe flawed, but I think....", not very encouraging, will my system get messed up?, that is the rub.

Better wait a bit for afterthoughts.

[congo]

I set a drive up that way experimenting a few months ago, it worked for me. I can't see why you couldn't do it safely as long as you install windows to the correct partition.

The method did create some unusal side effects, I can't remember all the specifics, but I think it had to do with using or installing programs on partitions common to both OS's, I worried about conflicts so I didn't keep it that way for long, even though it caused me no problem at the time. ( I don't keep any OS active for too long anyway)

You really should get hold of another hard drive so you can have some fun with it.

It's awefully serious when all your data is locked into a single drive, you haven't got the freedom to experiment without fear of losing everything.

All my system builds now contain dual hard disks with a small OS partition (+-50gb) and a large data partition on each, it removes a lot of anxiety.

[luke]

Best leave it to try when really needed, in anger.