A machine with two copies of XP installed...

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

A friend has a PC with two copies of Win XP installed - there's what I'm
told is a 'broken'/'corrupted'/infected - no one seems sure - copy of XP
Home in C:\WINDOWS\, and a working XP Pro in C:\WINDOW2\.

C:\boot.ini mentions both; the latter is the default.


This is a machine where no-one has kept a record of what software has been
installed when, nor how anything has been configured. I'm trying to bring
order to chaos. I'm considering renaming

C:\WINDOWS

to something like

C:\WINDOWS-to-be-deleted-soon

so that if the machine still runs ok that set of files can be got rid of in
due course. If I do this do I need at this stage to remove the line in
boot.ini that refers to that version of Windows?



Also, how sure can I be that Windows itself is careful enough only to load
files from / update files in %systemroot% rather than "C:\WINDOWS\"
explicitly?

I suppose that apps-wise I can't be sure that none references C:\WINDOWS
directly either, but at least with apps I should be able to uninstall/
reinstall/ reset/ reconfigure things as needed...


Also, if the rename (and/or eventual deletion of C:\WINDOWS) works, would it
later be safe to rename C:\WINDOW2 to C:\WINDOWS ? I presume that would
only be possible in safe mode or with a linux live CD? Clearly boot.ini
would need to be updated at the same time - or perhaps I could have two
lines in boot.ini both with the same parameters apart from the folder name
so that one would always match the available folder?



All advice gratefully received...

 

[John John - MVP]

A friend has a PC with two copies of Win XP installed - there's what I'm
told is a 'broken'/'corrupted'/infected - no one seems sure - copy of XP
Home in C:\WINDOWS\, and a working XP Pro in C:\WINDOW2\.

C:\boot.ini mentions both; the latter is the default.


This is a machine where no-one has kept a record of what software has been
installed when, nor how anything has been configured. I'm trying to bring
order to chaos. I'm considering renaming

C:\WINDOWS

to something like

C:\WINDOWS-to-be-deleted-soon

so that if the machine still runs ok that set of files can be got rid of in
due course. If I do this do I need at this stage to remove the line in
boot.ini that refers to that version of Windows?



Also, how sure can I be that Windows itself is careful enough only to load
files from / update files in %systemroot% rather than "C:\WINDOWS\"
explicitly?

You will find out when you rename the C:\Windows folder. When you boot
the machine Windows uses files from the %systemroot% folder, if the
variable points to Window2 then that is where Windows will work.

I suppose that apps-wise I can't be sure that none references C:\WINDOWS
directly either, but at least with apps I should be able to uninstall/
reinstall/ reset/ reconfigure things as needed...


Also, if the rename (and/or eventual deletion of C:\WINDOWS) works, would it
later be safe to rename C:\WINDOW2 to C:\WINDOWS ? I presume that would
only be possible in safe mode or with a linux live CD? Clearly boot.ini
would need to be updated at the same time - or perhaps I could have two
lines in boot.ini both with the same parameters apart from the folder name
so that one would always match the available folder?

You won't be able to rename the Window2 folder, at least not without
considerable effort of trying to fix every registry entry and every
shortcut pointing to the Window2 folder, for all intents and purposes
this is not really a viable thing to try.

All advice gratefully received...

These parallel installations can cause problems with many of the shared
folders, they are usually last ditch attempts to try to access the disk
to salvage files or to try to fix the original installation. You should
really ditch the whole setup, the best way to fix a mess like that is to
salvage the user's private files and then format the drive and do a
clean installation, in the end this is really the easiest, fastest and
most reliable thing to do.

John

 

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

These parallel installations can cause problems with many of the shared
folders...

John

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply to my questions; it's much
appreciated.