Dual Boot

PeteHerts

Hello everyone.
Is it possible to do a dual boot with the same installation disc of XP?
Many thanks in advance.

Pete

fwor

Must confess I've never tried, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, simply by using a separate partition for each installation.

You will of course need to use a separate boot loader - not least because the second XP install will over-write the MBR of the first.

I'm fairly sure that if you run something like Super GRUB Boot Disk after the second install, it will find both Windows installs and build a boot loader with a menu that offers to boot one or the other.

Now the obvious question: why would you want to do that?

esuhl

It is indeed possible, and the XP Bootloader should automatically pick up the second installation and prompt you to select which XP installation to use when you boot.

I do this at home, where I have a "quick and dirty" installation of XP for messing around with and a "clean" version where I have only work-based programs (like MS Office) installed.

fwor

Thanks for the correction. I didn't realise that XP's own bootloader handles it properly now - IIRC in NT4 it would cope with different versions of Windows ok but not 2 of the same version.

As you probably know, it's fine to use that method to keep "work" and "home" stuff separate, but not good in terms computer security, as it's trivial for a virus/rootkit to search an infected machine for other partitions/volumes and compromise them as well.

PeteHerts

I knew someone would ask why I wanted to do this :rotfl:
My flatmate (honest) uses my old laptop but he likes to shall we say surf for the ladies :rolleyes: but I'm not always there with my laptop so he can do banking (yes I said BANKING) so I was thinking of setting up his laptop with dual but only wanted to use a Windows OS as anything else would confuse him :rotfl:
Thanks for the replies and from what you kind people have said I'm better off leaving things as they are.
I want to build a HD Media Centre soon so he can use that for banking.