Has anybody any experience of making multiple copies of WinXP on different partitions (of 1 computer) using Partition Majic. What works OK for 98 seems not so good with XP. The problem is that when I make a copy of XP in another partition (keeping only 1 partition as active at any one time (ie others are hidden) and therefore all are effectively seperate 'c' drives) there still seems to be some read across between the different XP copies - if I load a programme into XP on 1 partition then it appears in the load/save (control panel) software section of XP in other partitions! There seems to be a residual seperation however, as programmes loaded into 1 partition cannot be removed from another. More disturbingly is what happens when you copy XP into another partition (to a second drive) and then delete the copy. What seems to happen is that XP in the original partition becomes unbootable and you get the dreaded 'missing or corrupt hal.dll' message. If I then undelete the copied partitition, copy it back to the original position then it will boot fine! My inference from all of this is that when copying XP, then either the Master Boot Record of XP seems to retain some form of connectivity (which needs to be maintained) between the active partition containing XP and the copied version of XP on hidden partitions or there remains some form of registry read-across. I am somewhat confused and any help in shedding some understanding on this would be most welcome. Peter

Hello, We have 2 copies of XP on our computer. My wife got tired of my constant adding / deleting. So now when booting up our computer / we have the choice (Boot Magic-From Partition Magic 7.0)to boot to her XP or mine. I pretty much used the procedures posted at the Powerquest website, to install our dual boot xp. Try here. http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id2647.html There is an error although to their procedure. After installing xp several times, I found that the reason for the XP failures were due to bad information at this site. Everything that is said is correct except under item number 3, we are told that it would be ok to make the new primary partition before the working 1st XP. WRONG. That cost me alot of time. Powerquest will not admit this error. Here is why it is an error. Lets say You install your first xp on primary partition 0 (zero)(the very first primary partition) It is a working xp......works great. Now you make a new partition in front of the working XP.This moves the first partition into the second primary partition. The 2nd installation of xp will work on its' new partition......zero. But the first installation of xp now fails because it is now on primary partition number 1 looking for bootup files on primary partition number zero. I have found that if you install the second XP on a new primary partition after the original partition, everything is fine because nothing got moved around. The first XP's boot up files are exactly where setup placed them and the same goes for the second installation of XP. Also, the only communication between the two xp's that I have ever noticed is. We also have in addition to 2 each C: drives (we only have 1 hard drive), we have hard drive letters D: and E:. D: drive is her extra drive and E: is mine. I delete files on my logical hard drive letter E: and when she is on her XP, my files show up in her Recycle Bin. After thinking about this, I found that this could only be normal as either xp when booted into is then in charge of every hard drive letter except the other hidden C: drive.

you need to edit the boot.ini file. the link below tells you how. go out to microsoft.com and search for this article Q289022. if you mess up and choose the wrong install of XP, you'll have to format and install windows.