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Installing Windows 2000 professional and Windows XP home edition on the same computer.

Hi,

I have a question about Installing Windows 2000 professional and Windows XP home edition. It looks a little funny, but for me this is the only option. I recently purchased a new laptop and it originally had Windows XP home edition.

I am a developer, so I formatted the complete laptop and Installed Windows 2000 professional. Now the problem is, my wife is not comfortable using this OS. She wants to have Windows XP home edition back again. There is another problem that my Sony Digital Camera, Camcorder, Scanner and printer are not working on Windows 2000. These all items were working fine on XP home edition.

Now the problem is that I have only one partition (C Drive on NTFS). So I want to create the two partitions and install Windows 2000 professional on one partition and Windows Xp home edition on the other in oder that everything works fine. I want the default boot as Windows 2000 professional.

Can any of you guys help me to get this done. Please telll me in detail right from the begining about the the type of the file system(NTFS or FAT) for both the OS and the necessary steps to be followed, so that I can install both the OS without any problem.

Please let me know if this is good idea to format the disk frequequently.

Thanks a lot for all of your help.

Run2004

Lee W, MVP

Formatting the disk frequently is fine. Not necessary except if you want to install from scratch, but I've never heard of a problem if people format frequently.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can coexist nicely on the machine. Partition the drive according to how much space you want to allocate to each Operating System.

Then install Windows 2000 first.

Then install Windows XP, but make sure you tell it to install to the other partition.

Update Both Operating systems with Windows Updates and the most recent service packs, then reinstall your applications. (You'll have to install them once for each OS you want them on).

After everything is setup, you can use the System Control panel in Windows 2000 to change the default operating system to 2000 instead of XP.

run2004

ASKER

But I don't know how to create the partition. I have a single partition. Can you please help me on this. I never did the partitioning before.

Lee W, MVP

Check out Ranish Partition Manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/

run2004

ASKER

Thanks, Let me try this and I will get back to you very soon

TannerMan

Here is a step by step for starting from scratch

http://windows.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fwindowsxp%2Fpro%2Fusing%2Fhowto%2Fgettingstarted%2Fmultiboot.asp

run2004

ASKER

I tried all the solutions, but nothing worked. Please let me know if I can create the partitions manually.

Thanks!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

rmcferren

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Lee W, MVP

Can you be more specific? "Nothing worked"? How did nothing work? What happened? Error Messages? What were they?

run2004

ASKER

Dear rmcferren,

If I try to delete the partition then I get the warning message that all the system files will be deleted. If suppose I delete the partition jthen how can I recreate the partition??

run2004

ASKER

Dear rmcferren,

Partition magic worked. Giving you full points