. . .I believe one would need to edit the boot.ini file. . .
Yes and No. . .
When you make another partition active, your system looks in that partition expecting to find the files needed for booting.
If it finds an exact copy of your BOOT.INI, it will use that information to run the system in your OLD partition.
To fix this, you have choices. . .
You could edit the BOOT.INI in your new location to run XP from your new location by changing "partition(1)" to "partition(2)"
Note: In BOOT.INI, disks are numbered from 0 while partitions are numbered from 1. Also, partition numbers reflect the location of the entry in the partition table, NOT the location of the partition on the disk.
You could edit your original BOOT.INI to point to the new partition.
Or you could edit your BOOT.INI to create a multi-boot system where you could choose your normal XP or your "Testing" XP.
I like the last option. Once completed, no additional effort is needed. The downside: a boot menu. (But you can make the timeout really quick.)
Cheers, PW.
P.S. If one copies the three magic files for XP booting to a bootable media, they can use it to start their system.
BOOT.INI
ntldr
NTDETECT.COM
Of course, you could use this too. You could make a "Boot the Test Partition Floppy." That way, you wouldn't need to alter any of your BOOT.INI files
P.P.S.
A digression: Make a BOOT.INI that'll handle any system. The relevant changes. . .
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP A" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP B" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="XP C" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP D" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP E" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP F" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS="XP G" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP H" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP I" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP J" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(3)\WINDOWS="XP K" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP L" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP M" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP N" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(3)\WINDOWS="XP O" . . .
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP P" . . .
Your Boot Menu will present an opportunity to try booting from all possible partitions on all disks. It's a "Quick and Dirty" fix for BOOT.INI problems. Once you determine which line "works" you can apply the changes to your "real" BOOT.INI
DISCLAIMER: If you have more than one operating system on your machine, it may not be acceptable to your User License with Microsoft. (A Technet subscription may get you around this.) |
