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Dual Boot two different XP's?

Hi, okay basically I've gone thru the whole dual boot process before however not in this situation and I'm curious how to go about it. I already have XP installed on my current system however I have another copy I'd like to install as well, it's a real slim version that quickly loads and I want to run a few tests. I also however don't wish to screw up my current XP install. How should I go about dual booting two copies of XP? I was thinking make another partition and set it up on there but both copies would look to C for certain boot info so I'm not sure if that would even work..

ideas?

Frosty555

It's not too complex so long as you have pre-vista OSes. Install windows XP to the secondary partition, and then add an entry into the boot.ini of windows in the primary partition, that points to the new installation. E.g.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Slip Boot" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

When you boot, the official boot loader will be on C:, but when you select the second boot item, it will boot the second windows up. When the second windows boots, it will should use it's own hard drive as C:.

Frosty555

As always, make backups of boot.ini and have a recovery disk handy just in case. Modifying boot.ini in a bad was without a backup is one way to mess up your system, so keep a backup good copy handy. I usually just copy boot.ini to boot.ini.bak.

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