setup to choose which partition to boot XP from?

[jpw]

Hi, we have several sales people in the field and are looking for a reasonably user-friendly way for them to choose one of two XP partitions to boot each time they boot.

What we'd like to do is this:
1) COPY their existing partition (already running WinXP) to a second partition (also a primary)
2) have OS Selector give a menu of which partition to boot from

(In our case, we'll then install some special apps and data on the second partition, and we do not want apps or malware on the first partition to have access to the data on the second partition. The second partition won't even have internet access enabled, for example. So we'll have our sales people boot into ne or the other partition depending on what they are doing.)

And what we'd like is when they boot from partition A then partition B is not accessible (until the next time they chosoe which to boot from).

I saw on some support replies a generic reference to a Microsoft article about having to modifying the boot.ini file to recognize the second partition's OS? If so, could you supply the EXACT steps needed to make your software "see" the second copy of the XP (on the copied partition)?

For example, the Microsoft article says generically:
At the command prompt, type:
bootcfg /copy /d Operating System Description /ID#

But what goes in the ID# field? After we copy the partition, how do we correlate what Disk Director has done with what the boot.ini file is expecting?

Thanks!

P.S. This seems to be a common enough question that you might want to have a nice detailed FAQ -- or even better, modify the software so it just does it automatically -- if you copy a partition with XP on it, it's a reasonable expectation that your OS Selector would give you a choice of which one you want to boot from.

[Acronis Support]

Hello jpw,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Partition and Disk Managing Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/).

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 will allow you to copy the system partition.

Please be aware that you will be able to choose what operating system to boot. Acronis OS Selecotr allows you to see what the system partition is for each operating system. You are also able to hide a partition from the operating system. Please take a look at this previous post of mine (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=121859), it describes what steps you should take to perform this operation.

We would also like to recommend you read Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 User's Guide (http://download.acronis.com/pdf/DiskDirectorSuite10.0_ug.en.pdf) attentively.

You can also find the FAQ (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/faq.html) section helpful.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/) to see how the software works on your computer.

Please visit Acronis online store (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/sales/online/) to purchase the full version of the product.

Please also note that we have a flexible system of discounts and the amount of the discount varies depending on the number of copies you want to purchase.

In case you are planning to purchase many copies, please contact our Sales Team at sales@acronis.com.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

[jpw]

That does not answer the question. Yes I read the manual, but the manual does NOT address the issue of how to "find" the OS on a second partition that has been copied from the original partition.

The question is, after copying a partition I now have two primary partitions each with a copy of WinXP. But the OS Sleector at boot time only sees ONE instance of WinXP -- not both.

In an earlier post, you said "go modify the boot.ini" but gave no example of what the modification is supposed ot be.

So my question is -- step by step -- what needs to be done to simply copy a partition and have BOTH copies of the partition available to OS Selector.

This question gets asked over and over it seems in these forums, possibly because you don't have a good FAQ in the subject.

[Acronis Support]

Hello jpw,

I'm sorry for not being accurate enough in my explanation.

Please be aware that in order to make two copies of Windows not to interact with each other you should first use Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep) as it is described in this FAQ article (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq.html/#30). Please note that this step is necessary before copying the system partition, because in other case all the applications installed under your original operating system will be booted from the first partition even you boot the second copy of Windows.

After that you can copy this primary partition with prepared Windows to a new location. Then you should edit the boot.ini file. Please take a look at this article (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;289022) describing how to edit the boot.ini file. You will need only to add the appropriate string for new copy of Windows in the end of the file.

At the next step you will need to run Acronis OS Selector and perform the actions which I have mentioned in my previous post in order to hide each operating system from the other.

If you encounter any problems with the described operation then please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317) and submit a request for technical support (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/support/). Attach the collected report file to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko