Quote:
Originally Posted by status1  "Xp does not have or use DOS it utilizes a simulated Dos prompt for certain commands and that is all. That is why the MSDOS program must be installed as the tutorial says. Now to save you some time.....the tutorial works if you follow the directions as stated and not try to jump ahead and ignore the steps as given..."
I understand that but it's kind of missing the point of installing xp without a cd
I mean if the cd is available and the laptop hard drive can be hooked up to the computer why go to the secondary step of installing ms dos ?
Why not just boot from the cd and install xp directly ?
"The installation of the boot manager can be installed to any drive and it will automatically set up all drives that are installed or that will be installed."
So you are saying that I can install the boot manager to the slave drive and therefore the slave drive will have control over the primary drive ?
Does the boot manager affect the windows boot ?
What happens if I take the slave drive out ?
Does the boot manager go with it ? |
You cannot
install windows XP or any later windows versions on a drive connected to one computer , remove the drive and insert it into another computer and expect it to work. It is not like Windows 98 where swapping harddrives is permissable. In XP it doesn't work! There are certain checks that are performed during each boot that must match the record from the original installation...if there is no match XP shuts down and must be re-installed and re-activated because of the violation. This also happens if you swap out too many parts from the original computer, as XP monitors the ID's of certain (10 different items) hardware and if the ID's do not match the checksum then it shuts down and must be re-activated.
With that in mind the CD is used solely for copying files to the Dos partition and then the harddrive is replaced so that the installation can be performed on the actual computer it is to be used on.
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When the boot manager is installed...it is placed within the 8MB lead-in space available for micro data on the front of all harddrives and partitions. Once installed the program is migrated to all other active partitons and harddrives so that if one drive fails the other drives can still be used to boot with. Depending which boot manager is being used then one can actually have a cloned drive reinstall the operating system and be back up and operational in a mater of minutes with minimum loss of data instead of hours reinstalling everything!
As to having control over which drive...the boot manager controls that and not the drive even if it is put on an active slaved drive. Upon boot the BM reads the available drive/partition options and asks which you wish to boot to. So again the terminology of master slave does not exist only the indentity of the bootable operating systems
installed at time of boot...meaning that drives can be completely removed and switched and reinstalled so long as the operating system (XP) was installed on that computer...Multiple installations of XP is possible.
In fact I have 3 different XP installations (all have their own COA as by the EULA) They are stripped down installations because each are used solely for a single purpose...Movie making, Photo editing, gaming
I then have windows 3.1, windows 98 & 98SE and 2000 pro that I use for beta testing programs and installations. The newer operating systems like Vista and windows 7 beta are on seperate computers all together!
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The third party boot manager does not affect the boot files of any of the operating systems. What it does is hides the ability to see that it is a bootable drive/partition unless selected to boot. This way all boot files remain intack as when they were first installed....no editing required or needed.
This is what also allows the drives to be removed and your other boot options are still available unless they were also installed on the physical drive that was removed.....you do not have to have seperate drives. multiple partitons work just as well.
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This is what I use:
Bootit NG from terabyte unlimited
TeraByte Unlimited :: Boot Manager :: Partition Manager :: Drive Image :: Disk Copy :: Drive Wipe :: Hard Drive Utilities
It is a paid for third party boot manager that you can try fully for a trial period before you have to pay for it but it will shut you down and force you to pay or remove the program.
This program has many other options that I use for repairing and re-installing operating systems that others do not have or use. It will allow up to 200 devices to be installed as long as you have the controllers to use that many. ...it is a bit technical for using and installing but once installed is quite easily navigatable....prefered time out boot options, password protected drives and partitons are just a few of the many options...but hqas the program Image for windows built in for back up and cloning.
I have beta tested the GAG program
GAG, the Graphical Boot Manager
and find it very user friendly and includes password protection options and prefered timeout boot options. It limits the use of only 9 operating systems to be installed though......for a free program it is really quite decent and works similar to Boot itNG!
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