Here is my question can you install windows xp operating system on ur pc twice,and is there away to tell if xp is installed twice in two seperate partition.I think I might of did this by not knowing what I was doing after deleting some files after uninstalling norton security products from my pc files manually and then deleting them from my waste basket before checking to see if everything else was still operative.When I went back to my desktop none of my progams would work when clicked on and like when I would go into my computor none of the drives were pictured anymore. I then went ahead and put the operating recovery cd in and started to install windows xp again after installing I would come opon the old xp that did'nt function anymore but I also could go to the new installed xp that would function,some where along the way I stopped being able to access the old xp,what I was wondering is it still there and can I remove it with out effecting the new xp since I got that up and running with all my old hardware and and software installed and working or should I just let it be since everything is up and running good again.Thanks for all the feedback in advance. Steve Crane
Q1. can you install windows xp operating system on ur pc twice? Ans. Not sure but if yes then its not a good practice because you will get clashes and it will not work properly. Q2. is there away to tell if xp is installed twice in two seperate partition? Ans. Its very simple. Just go to each partition and look if you have windows folder in there, where you can see all the drivers and windows files. Never delete a program unless you doesnt have a unistall path for that because if you delete a program then it leaves so many things remaining in your computer for eg. Registry files.....Which affects your computers performance. Yea, you are right either you have deleted or moved the programs. A moved programs shortcut can work again if you tell the path to it. How can you expect from windows to load your other programs which you have deleted. To make those programs working you need to reinstall them again. There is nothing that windows can do in this case. And Yea, if you have deleted many programs than its better to format your drive and reinstall windows~! Cheers
basically it is possible to have up to 4 XP partitions on the same drive, will post instruction tommorow as i must go out, bye for now.
Ill be waiting to here your reply,and how can you tell if there is more then one xp installed. thanks
right, hold tight, cos this will go fast, i'll tell you how i did it (and somebody will probably tell you the proper way to do it, probably using the recovery console) firstly you need some patitioning software, personally used Acronis Partition Expert 2003 (www.acronis.com), basically just partitioning software that allows you to create a bootable cd, if you have broadband uninstall the software (cos i think it slowed down my broadband connection) set in the BIOS boot from cd first, with your partitioning software cd in your cd drive reboot, then either resize your existing XP partition or create a new primary partition (i created a FAT32 (mimimum of 3 Gb) but you could create a NTFS and use a boot disk of recovery console later, i'll continue to describe FAT32) then i set the primary partition i created active and hid the existing partition (probably not nessisary as XP cant see all partitions hidden or not), then with the blank partition set active (doesn't have to be blank (cos during install XP lets you decide to format NTFS or FAT32 or leave FS (file system) as it is) reboot with your XP cd in your cd drive, install XP (and decide if you want FAT32 or NTFS) then when you reboot and you will have a boot menu, if you leave it alone for 30 seconds it will boot into the XP you just installed, if you change it from the default and boot you will get the hal.dll error (somebody will probably tell you another way to rectify the hal.dll error, but i think the problem is with C:\boot.ini, probably fixed by rebuilding the boot list in recovery console) then i reboted to my partitioning cd and set win98 active (win9x doesn't seem to mind being converted from primary to logical but XP doesn't like it, but you may know or find a way to convert XP from primary logical and back to primary) after booting win98 i then accessed my FAT32 XP installs C:\boot.ini: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(1)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect multi(1)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect look at a graphical view of the hd and compare with boot.ini inside the inverted comma's is the descriptio of the O/S,the number inside the brackets after "partition" and before "\WINDOWS=" is the partition number from left to right (so make sure that if you move an XP partition change the partition number in boot.ini) at the start of the same line "multi(1)" this means, use boot menu, basically i set boot timeout to zero and boot from cd then set active the partition avtive that i want to use then reboot on hd, btw i discovered this by accident, good luck, the way i tell how many XP instalations is by using my partitioning cd and look at the labels of the partition, good luck P.S. each XP act totally independant from one another
