Keeping Windows XP from seeing both copies on the first boot of
the clone after the clone has been made didn't do anything for me.
Yeah, must admit that I havent actually tried it with two partitons
on the one drive. And its never been that clear how you are making
the copy either, clearly the boot.ini will be way out if its just
copied intact when the XP is in a different partition to the one
that it was created for.
manually editing BOOT.INI
I don't think that's related to the Registry corruption problem.
Bet it is. And it aint corruption, you are getting a bleed from
the XP install you THINK you are running into the the registry
of the XP install you are ACTUALLY running.
You're just getting confused about which one you are actually
running. And it isnt that easy to guarantee that with the two
copys of XP in different partitions on the one physical drive.
When they are on separate drives, you can always physically
disconnect the drive you dont want boot off and then you will be
completely sure which particular copy you are actually booting.
Bet you dont get a bleed in that particular situation.
Like the Registry? In any case, I have made sure that
Windows XP did not see the other copy at any time.
How ? The XP boot is more complicated than it superfically looks.
The only real way to be completely sure that you
arent using any of the partition you dont want to
use is to image it and write zeros thru that partition
to ensure that XP cant decide that there is any
part of XP in that partition. I bet if you do it that
way there wont be any leak and in fact you will find
that you cant actually boot the copy at all, because
the bits of the original it uses aint there anymore.
The Registry information still leaked.
That doesn't work either.
It does if you do the copy properly and do
the other very early XP boot phase stuff too.
Its perfectly feasible to have two installs of XP selectable in
a boot menu and to not have any registry bleed between them.
The BOOT.INI file is not cryptic to me.
Maybe its not as clear as you assume it is.
But, as far as I know, it's not programmable either.
Corse it is.
Yes, I know it can be edited.
And you can see the editing working if you do it right.
I have been making copies of the operating-system
partition for backup and troubleshooting since before
PartitionMagic 4 was published.
The problem is that the NT/2K/XP family have a
more complex boot than the Win9x and ME family do.
That can and does bite countless in the arse.
The registry information leaks somehow.
It is a problem I can easily reproduce.
Yep, and so can the failure to boot the
copy when the original is removed too.
Your suggestion of ensuring that Windows XP cannot see
the copy on the first boot of the copy simply does not work.
It does with physical drives. You can find quite a few saying
that doing the copy properly on the first boot has worked for
them after I have suggested that using groups.google
You have said that a dozen times in excitefull replies
Just another of your pathetic little drug crazed fantasys.
scattered throughout this thread. What you're saying is easy to
understand after the first or second iteration, but it just doesn't work.
It does with separate physical drives, as
even you can check using groups.google.
You must not be hiding the original partition effectively enough.
And thats easy to prove by actually erasing the original
partition. Bet you will find that the copy wont boot anymore
and thats the proof that you arent actually booting JUST
the copy, you're actually using whats in the original too.
AND it must be doable, because its perfectly feasible to
have two bootable copys of XP on a single hard drive
and that MS article tells you one way of achieving that.