I was just wondering if xp can be copied to another partition without any cloning software or installing xp from cd

I see a lot of people are having problems installing xp without a cd on their laptop so I was wondering if it can be done just by making a separate partition and copying xp from one partition to another or to a second hard drive and set up a dual boot

This is a pretty sick way to install xp and probably won't help those that can't boot into xp at all. It's also probably not a good idea if you have some files that you want to keep

This whole idea got me thinking about what are the minimum files required to boot xp
So I have this old pc with an AMD 1Ghz cpu where I have a dual boot windows 98/xp that I am experimenting with. A couple of months ago I messed something up on xp and I didn't know how to repair it and it was running kind of slow so I installed xp again on a second hard drive and managed to fix the first one.
Then I deleted xp from the second drive but it still shows up on the boot menu
So this past weekend I selected the xp that pointed to the xp that was on the second drive and I got an error message saying that the hal.dll was missing or corrupt
I was also doing some reading on the net about what makes xp boot and this was one of the files needed Then after booting into the working xp I copied the hal.dll to the empty drive to a folder I made to look like the working xp directory
Then the next file needed was the ntoskernel so I installed that and to make a long story short I ended up with some weird looking desktop I guess it's called the classic desktop. Just flat blue About the only thing that worked was the
folders so you can copy files. I see all the programs from the working xp listed
in the control panel under add remove programs So I guess those got copied over from the working xp

So as you can imagine it's going to take a lot of cleaning and tweeking to make it a viable xp but so far it seams to be working in a kind of rough format

I was wondering if anyone else tried to install it this way and how did it turned out ?

What you are proposing there is an illegal activity....one working operation of xp per license per computer... You can install a second XP to the system as dual boot only if there is a second different activation license as well!

Cloning or an image back up would be the proper and best ways to accomplish a re-installation of the operating system....

Perhaps it's illegal although I am not sure why.
I am not making any profit by installing it twice
I would understand if it was a business server then different people can use the same software. I am just a home user and I can only use it one at the time.

Anyway my intent was not to do anything illegal I was only trying to see a workaround for those that do not have a cd available and if it can be done
in the first place
As you said "one working operation of xp per license per computer"
So technically if you are trying to do this, the first copy is not working that's why you want to install a second copy,
Now once you fixed the first copy you should delete the second one just to keep things legal

No it is explicitly explained in the End Users License Agreement that you may only install One Copy of the operating sytem to any computer. Storing files as a restore option is not an installed copy...nor is it a working copy.

I know this is a technicality but I did not " install " the second copy I only copied files from one partition to another
Is there a law against copying files ?

Anyway I finally found out how to make windows boot faster
The answer is a faster pc
That's the only reason I was looking into how xp is booting but then I got sidetracked into installing xp without a cd
I added more memory but it did not make any difference as far as the booting speed is concerned
I also got a hard drive with higher (7200) rpm but also did not make any difference
Only when I installed in a system with 3.46 ghz it got faster 20 seconds compared to about a minute on a 1ghz system
What really puzzles me is that the xp that I have on the laptop with only 500mhz and 256mb ram is booting faster (35-40 seconds) than the one on the pc with 1Ghz and 1Gb ram (about 1 minute)
The only difference I see is the hard drive but since xp cannot run on a different system that was installed on I cannot verify if the hard drive is making it boot faster

More than likely it (slowness) is caused by what startup programs you have installed and as well as what extra hardware that is there as well!

I don't have any more startup programs than I have on the other one
This is right after installation so I did not add any applications.
I also disabled all the services except the ones needed by windows and still did not make it any faster that's why I was trying to see what are the minimum files needed by windows in order for it to boot
As far as the hardware the only thing that is different is the motherboard since I am using the same monitor and hard drive when comparing the 2 pc's
As far as the laptop the only difference is the motherboard + screen and the hard drive
Is there any one particular hardware that can make it that much slower or it's a combination of hardware ?

It could be a combination of various different things...Memory boards act differently installed in different computers. A slight leak of memory can slow things down.Registry files that are broken or empty pathes are a major instigator. It could also be that a single file got corrupted or installed badly when the operating system was installed....

Basically there are millions of bytes of coding that any single one goes bad can have adverse effects on a system.

Power supplies are rated by their ability to put out a fixed voltage but are governed by their percentage of accuracy. if it is not accurate their is a strong possibility that it will slow things down.....failing capacitors and diodes will do the same thing!

I still think it has something to do with this motherboard
I had this barebone system in the basement that I haven't used untill now and I decided to give it a try
It's an amd based cpu running at 2.08ghz so it's faster than the one I have xp installed on now but not as fast as the one I installed it on earlier just to try it out and see if the boot speed improves
The end result is that it's just as fast (20 seconds) on a 2.08ghz as it is on a 3.46ghz but for some reason on the 1ghz motherboard it's actually slower(about 1 minute) than on a laptop running at 500mhz (30-40 seconds)

I swapped the power supply first but it did not make any difference
Only when I changed the motherboard there was a huge improovement

So if anyone has a pc266 with an amd cpu and tries to run xp I would advise
to switch to a faster motherboard althogh probably most people are using much faster motherboards these days