Hi Guys,

I finally got round to fitting my 160Gb Maxtor HDD into my system and I have a couple of question im hoping some of our techies here can please help me out with.

I have made several partitions on my Drive one for normal browsing and downloading of various tools related to this site, one for Games and one for my Movie Utils and the largest partition for all my rips and conversions.

1. What I wanted to know is as im installing XP Pro as my OS I think I read somewhere that I could install it on the various partitions without a boot manager as XP will ask you which partition you want to boot off. Is this true?

If it isn't it's not important as I have freeware boot managers I can use.

2. I had a load of MS Outlook Express Message Rules set up on my old HDD can I inport them somehow to my new rebuilt OS as I don't fancy having to type them all in again.

3. On the movie partition I don't intend having that partition hooked up to my network or the net how can I make it secure so that im safe from the net can I use XP's own firewall and block everything or will I still need a third party firewall?

I was thinking do I need to have all the network protocols installed on this partition if I don't intend networking this partition? In otherwords can I remove the TCP/IP and QoS, Clients for Microsoft Networks & File and Print Sharing. Can I untick these?

Thanks in advance for any help given.

Btw I downloaded Maxtor's drive utils from their website to partition my HDD and I was really impressed with the good tools it came with.

I hope you guys can help me out on these matters.

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Regards.

Michael.

I read up on my old notes and I found out how to edit the Boot.ini file for my various XP Pro installs.

It was really easy just installed 3 different XP Pro to the three partitions and edited the boot.ini to name them: Games, Browsing & Movie Tools.

What I was still wandering though is should I disable the networking in the Movie Tools partition as im worried that this may slow down the pc on that partition.

To prevent the movie tools partition from being accessed from the web im just going to install a firewall and block all traffic.

__________________
Regards.

Michael.

Hi Michael,
I don't understand why you will install three WinXP Pro on each of your HD partitions.
Booting from any of the three of them you'll be able to see the data from other partitions, so you see you don't gain much.
Unless you have a way to hide the other two partitions from each boot partition.
If that is not the case I would go with a single XP installation.
Even because (I think) you would need three XP licenses
Better use a good freeware firewall like zonealarm/kerio/sygate.
It's way damn better than the one that comes with XP SP2...
Otherwise if you have a spare PC and you don't know what to do with it, as it's specs are a bit out of date, try http://m0n0.ch/wall or www.smoothwall.com.
That's what I've been trying lately
Cheers

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Rui

do fdisk using 98se disquete boot to do partitions and format, you will get advantages.
later..inside the system you can change what you need ....i will explain later, i have to go out.

Thanks for the replies guys.

@rds_correia

Strictlly speaking I shouldn't need to have three liscenses as I can only use one partition at a time so it's not like I've used this license on one machine and at the same time use it on another machine on my network which would definately in breech.

I know strictly speaking it may be a multi license issue but the reason that I wanted to multi boot was I didnt want my pc to get bogged down with too much installed on one partition like it has in the past.

So I wanted one partition purely for playing my Online Games.

Another for just Movie tools.

Another for browsing and burning and stuff like that.

When I first got into backup up my DVD's to DivX years ago it was always said the less stuff you have installed on your PC the better it will run and be less clogged up.

That is why I wanted a seperate Partition for movie conversions I dont want a load of other cr#p filling up my reg.

Now I can choose what I want to do when I boot up Play Games, Backup my DVD's or just browse and burn CD's.

@jorel

I don't really want to go back down the road of Win 98SE I shall leave the cobwebs on that old CD and let it rest in peace, sorry buddy.

It has worked out fine for me.

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Regards.

Michael.

(sorry for late, i was out! )
oh, i know but this is the point....is a little hard to explain but let me try:
example:
"one day" (who knows) you want to install in another partition 2 systems...an old system (ME as sample) with XP.
you can install ME and after XP to choose the system in the boot.
if you don't do fdisk with old systems never will work. XP can be installed in old formatations but old systems don't accept new formatations.
fdisk from 98se accept all windows system....if you do using XP or 2K and choosing in the boot the options, only if the fdisk was did from 98se.

only a little hint that seems useless but don't change the XP performance or work and accept all windows systems.
i can change the systems using ghost images in the same partition from 98se fdisk and another HDD with new formatation work only with 2K and XP (of course, ME and 98SE don't works in that HDD)

Sorry for the late reply jorel, ive just got around to putting all my files back into the rebuilt PC.

I understand what you are telling, thank you very much for this info buddy I really do appreciate and shall put it to good use.

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Regards.

Michael.