Existing PC (XP), partition HDD and reinstall XP on new partition?

davetrousers

I might be doing this as a favour for someone so any help would be appreciated.

Existing PC has a 250GB HDD and has Windows XP. Would it be possible to partition the HDD so that the existing install is on a (relatively small) 50GB partition, then reinstall Windows XP on to the remaining 200GB partition?

Then rearrange the HDD names so that the fresh install is C: and the Old version is on (or something else).

Thanks for your help.

closed

you could - why do they want 2 instances?

esuhl

davetrousers wrote: »

Then rearrange the HDD names so that the fresh install is C: and the Old version is on (or something else).

Although you can modify the partition mounting letters (e.g. C:, , E:, etc.), they aren't objective settings (so the partition represented by F: in one OS installation may be mounted as when you boot the other installation).

Also, it's probably not a good idea (if it's even possible) to do that to the Windows boot partition (the one containing the OS that you have booted into) as there will be multiple hard-coded references to that partition label in the registry that wont be updated when you re-label the partition.

Seeing as the partition letter labels are pretty arbitrary, why would you want to change them anyway?

davetrousers

closed wrote: »

you could - why do they want 2 instances?

Person A lending computer to person B

davetrousers

OK forget about changing Drive letters, was a minor point really.

GunJack

unless you had two different license keys for XP, you couldn't do it legally anyway.

Could you not just do it with two user accounts ???

esuhl

GunJack wrote: »

unless you had two different license keys for XP, you couldn't do it legally anyway.

I thought that Windows licences were supplied on a per-machine or per-user basis...?

Lucero_2

It would depend if the licence was OEM or retail.

Either way, person A lending to person B just isn't a good enough reason to want to do this. It won't stop person B from looking at, messing with person A's data.

Better to just created person B a user account.

heathcote123

esuhl wrote: »

I thought that Windows licences were supplied on a per-machine or per-user basis...?

It depends on the license you buy, most home users have OEM which is tied to the machine. Can't really be bothered to read a license agreement right now, but suspect you'd be fine with this arrangement. Might need to phone them to activate it though, but that rarely represents a problem.

How about a removable hdd caddy? Just swap the hdd over - much simpler and no chance of them wrecking your install.

esuhl

Lucero wrote: »

It would depend if the licence was OEM or retail.

But I thought that all (non-corporate) licences (both OEM and retail) were per-machine...?

With the OEM licence you can only install on one "machine" ever; with a retail licence you can only install on one machine concurrently. In either case I thought you'd be able to have multiple installations on the same PC without breaking the contract.

Still, it's been a while since I read the terms so maybe I'm wrong...

GunJack

It's probably a very grey area, but having the same COA installed on two separate partitions as is intended will be like having two separate machines....who knows how MS would see this, but I can probably guess