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Hey all,

I have a couple quick questions. I have been thinking about buying an 80gb external hard drive from newegg.com for my own personal use so I don't have to deal with my parents' screwey computer... I was wondering, would it be difficult to create a multi-boot system using Windows XP on both the internal and external hard drive? So I could choose from the main boot or the boot off the external hard drive? If that'd be too much of a pain to do, would my external hard drive have its own registry? That's what I really need fixed.

My dad played around with the registry so much that 3/4 of it is corrupted to the point where it can't be fixed even in safe mode or by reinstalling windows. Also worth mentioning is that I don't feel safe using this computer. Every time I get virus protection or spyware protection they uninstall it... I mean there has got be thousands upon thousands of viruses, spywares, adwares, trojans, and worms on this computer. They don't want their hard drive reformatted, and it would just be nice to have my own safe boot for only about $50.

My knowledge is extremely limited in this field of computers, but I have a general idea of it. If I could set up a multi-boot system it would not only be awesome, but it would be nice so when I move out in 1 and a half years I'd still be able to take everything on my computer - even though I might not have a computer right away. And it'd be nice to be able to have virus protection and such for myself. And to play games that I can't anymore because of the screwey registry. My biggest concern is not screwing up the bios of the main computer as I've never set up a dual-boot system before.

Thanks in advanced,

Bush Baby

1) get new parents

or

2) get own computer (for about $100 you can have an XP PC from ebay)

Well, thanks I guess.

Anybody know about dual-boot systems with external hard drives?

I'm not an expert in multi-boot either but I've had this problem also so I'll try to help.

My family has 5 people in it and we've had 5 computers over the years. Whenever one gets old enough that the hard drive starts failing it asks which disk to boot off of. Sometimes it takes you straight to the BIOS to tell it that.

So...

Try pressing F1 or whattever key brings up the BIOS when the computer starts to boot. Then tell it to boot off your hard drive instead of the default. I've only done this on my Grandpop's old computer which has two operating systems, we only use the old one to play Doom II (sound is screwy on WinXP) and that's how we do it. And the BIOS never broke when we did, so it was safe.

Or...

Set the drive number to A or B somehow (don't ask me how) so the computer will boot that only if it's connected. That way when you unplug the drive it will be your parent's computer again.

Or, get a Mac.

There's plenty of information on the net about booting from USB. Infact, alot of Linux systems can boot from USB (such as DSL, and Knoppix).

Get yourself a normal HDD, maybe a 500GB one, and then convert it to an external HDD with the minimal setup fee of simply buying a case and converter.

Once you've done all that, you have to set your parent's PC's BIOS to boot from USB, so you can plug your USB drive in and boot from that.
Forget about any kind of fast loading since you have to run it through USB.

As for their registry "corrupted to the point where it can't be fixed even in safe mode or by reinstalling windows", any reinstall of windows will fix the registry.
Don't try and say it's a be-all and end-all, because it's not. Your HDD is your HDD, no matter what MS tries to tell you, you can format it and reinstall windows as you like, and each time you do, it will write this little section of data to your HDD which just so happens to be called a "Registry".

if there are those kinds of security issues ib your computer then plugging any hard drive into it will infect the hard drive soo....... yeah thatd be dumb so just get a new computer lol

@Code dragon

Thanks for that little tid-bit.

@Jess T

I was unable to find any valuable information on running two winxp systems. I could just use linux, but I'm entirely newb with OS's other than windows. I figured the speed wouldn't be that great, but would it be horrible? I did do research, but I just wanted to hear this community's thoughts - I trust you guys more than some random hokie on some random forum.

And also, I reinstalled/repaired windows components and it didn't help the registry one bit.

@Sledder
There is security/data vault software for external hard drives to prevent that. Plus if I loaded decent virus/spyware protection that would be of no worry to me.

You could do two installs of XP on different partitions...though, most drives only have one partition..so you will need to get a partition manager that will elt you resize the main partition, and make another partition for you to install the second XP onto..
then, jsut setup XP on that parition and it should dualboot by itself...


it could be a lot easier if you were to buy a new hdd...there pretty cheap, $66 for 160gb SATA hdd...so...you could just install XP onto a new hdd and it should configure automatically for dualboot..

for USB, you probably could do it too...though, it would be a bit slow(iirc)..
but, even if your BIOS doesn't support USB booting, you could isntall onto that external hdd and the Windows installer should configure it for dualbooting...