xp dual boot hid partitns update each other

I have 2 XP partitions (one a clone with relabled vol label) Bootmagic is supposed to hide these partitions from each other. Initially the cloned partition XPb aborted boot with "missing file" msg which was on its C drive (see previous thread
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?p=244904#post244904).

However, I've just tried booting into the cloned copy again after a month gap and XPb loaded fine. Explorer only displays "visible partitions" i.e. not the original XPa and vice versa; but certain actions carried out in the XPb clone affect the original XPa. e.g. if I create a new user on XPb when I boot in XPa the "logon" includes the new user. AVG anti-vir resident shield refuses to load any more in either copy of XP and a few other quirks.

Can anyone explain how XP is able to update a hidden copy of XP and why?

Thanks for any help.

 

You won’t actually be booting into XP on the second partition, you will have a hybrid of both OSes, but mainly the OS on the first partition. I would say that the first partition is no longer hidden and the boot.ini file on the second is wrong.

Go into Disk Management (right click on My Computer and then Manage, and select Disk Management) this gives you a hard drive map and the status of the partitions. The partition marked ‘System’ is the one you are booted into. If there is another one marked ‘Boot’ then the ntloader was initiated on that one.

Look at the boot.ini files on both partitions, they should be exactly the same except the number in brackets after ‘partition’ on both lines, which should reflect the position of the partition on the hard drive.

 

Thanks McT - sure enough under manage, hiddn partition was identified (but described as unknown). I did consider altering boot.ini on partition 2 but didn't risk it - after your post I tried it and the 2 copies behaved differently. The user I set up on part 2 now only exists on partn 1!

All the best

 

Just an update - the to XP partitions appear to work completely independently (I may be wrong) if bootini is edited on partit 2 to "partition(2)" and if "/noexecute=optin" is removed.

 

When you clone XP to another partition or hard drive and then edit the boot.ini file on the new clone so that it reflects the new partition number, then yes both the parent and the clone will be fully independent of each other. I have several clones of XP on each of my two hard drives and all are fully independent. I have not had to remove the noexecute=optin switch from the boot.ini to achieve this. (Although I do now change it to noexecute=alwaysoff)

There are a few things however that can still partly link XP installs together.

You are using BootMagic and I assume it is installed inside your parent XP. If so then your clone is actually part dependent on the health of the parent. If you were to wipe this partition then you would also loose BootMagic and so your ability to boot the clone. To escape this problem you could either install BootMagic in its own partition, or use a MBR boot manager that does not reside on any partition.

The pagefile can sometimes become linked to both parent and clone. This is unusual for XP, but can happen depending on how you originally had the pagefile setup in the parent. I’ve found it always best to keep the pagefile on the XP partition.

System Restore monitors all visible partitions, so conflicts can occur if each XP install is monitoring the same partition, particularly a common data partition. If you still have System Restore turned on then it’s best to set it in the clone to only monitor it’s own partition and ignore all the others. One of the advantages of having clones of your OS is that you are not dependant on the fallible System Restore. Turning it off frees up space and resources.