Can someone help me do this?

[Cheddar]

I have two hard drives, a 120GB and an 80GB, one of them is currently installed with Windows XP.

I want to set my PC up so that it can dual boot, so that during startup, I can select one drive or the other to boot up Windows XP. I would like the default drive to be the 120GB one, i.e. if no key is pressed, it boots that one.

How can I do this? :uhwell:

I realise that Windows XP needs to be installed on both drives, but am not sure about how to get the dual boot screen or how the jumper settings should be set on the drives.

Finally, I would like windows to ONLY see the drive it booted from, i.e. if the 80GB drive is booted, the 120GB drive is invisible and unaccessible.

In effect, this is like having two PC's in one case.

Is this possible, and if so, how?!

Cheers :D

http://www.ewandew.com/sig/cheddar.gif

[Virgin San]

Jeez, you don't ask for much ;)

First of all, you don't necessarily need to separate the XP installations onto separate drives - you can just install XP on partition 1 and 2 of the first disk if you like.

You can fix up your security worries by playing around with the security settings of the other "drives" - My Computer, right click on drive, properties, security tab - or you can install some security apps if you prefer, which lock/password protect/hide drives altogether. NTFS required of course.

When you install the second copy of XP, the boot.ini file should automatically be edited such that you get a boot menu with a timeout and a default choice (as you require). You can edit this (change your default, time whatever) by running msconfig and fixing up the entry under the boot.ini tab - its pretty straightforward to figure out whats going on there, and if XP doesn't automatically edit it for some reason, you should be able to do it manually.

As for jumper settings, as they are should be fine.

So yes its very possible, enjoy :)

EDIT: Of course, if you are just looking to set this up so another user can use the PC and not see your files - it would be a lot easier to set up an new user and alter the permissions on your files so that they can't see them. They could likewise hide theirs :)

[Neo]

A 3rd party bootloader would be a good choice also.