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2 windows installations, one 9300

post #1 of 10
10/20/05 at 12:40am
Thread Starter 
Ok, I'm more or less finished for the year as of next week, and since I have been bloating my comp with software after software, I'm gonna do a reformat. But, since I need whole lot of stuff for work etc, I thought of doing a dual-boot with 2 windows xp pro sp2 installations - one with office, visual studio etc, and one that's tuned for gaming with o/c'ed vid card settings and games and not much else.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do that without a problem, so that if I want to play a game I'll just reboot into my 'game-os' and load up.

My big question is, can I make both windows installs share programs, settings, etc. I only have a 60gb hard drive until I can save up for a 100gb 7200, so I want to have a 1.5gb swap partition shared (I've got a seperate swap partition atm anyway so that shouldn't be an issue). I guess I can also install programs to a shared drive, but that might be problematic. And as for documents, well that doesn't really matter. I wont be working on any docs under my game-os. I do still want access to my games under my normal windows, if I cbf rebooting...

Has anyone heard of someone else trying this? I haven't been able to find any info on it, but I'm gonna go ahead with it next week, and if anyone's interested I'll post my results.
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post #2 of 10
10/20/05 at 12:56am
and why would you do that. It will only create mess what you tring to do, plus limit your space. I don't believe it will make computer run faster either.

If you want to do that create two partition on a hard drive and install windows to each.
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post #3 of 10
10/20/05 at 1:01am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by marcin12
If you want to do that create two partition on a hard drive and install windows to each.
Sorry, that's what I meant. I'm gonna have two small (2gb, maybe?) windows install partitions with a grub bootloader, one 1.5gb swap partition, the rest for data/programs. I want the programs to appear to be installed under each os, if possible.
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post #4 of 10
10/20/05 at 11:03am
Thread Starter 
bump?
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post #5 of 10
10/20/05 at 11:40am
You sure can do this.
Partition your HDD into 4 partitions: OS1, OS2, Program_DATA and swap.
Swap should be around 2.5 times total RAM installed.
Install OS1 into partition 1. Install OS2 into partition 2.
Go to Control Panel, Advanced, Advanced, remove default swap file HDD from partition 1 and set it to partition SWAP. Make it constant size.
Reboot.
Repeat for OS2.
Install all your programs into Program_Data partition for each OS.

Enjoy!
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post #6 of 10
10/20/05 at 11:49am
Thread Starter 
Yeah, looks like a goer. Might run in to dramas with both os's having programs installed in the same place (as in, os1 (non-games) playing games if they were installed under os2).

Was just wondering if people had already tried this.
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post #7 of 10
10/20/05 at 11:53am
I haven't but I would do it differently. I wouldn't share programs between OS'es, I would install office etc. into Partition 1 along with OS 1 and games into partition 2 along with OS2. And you would need 3 partitions total instead of 4.
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post #8 of 10
10/20/05 at 8:22pm
Thread Starter 
Haha, I'll probably have 7 or 8 partitions anyway - two xp, one programs, one data, one windows swap, linux, linux swap, maybe macos or reactos on there too
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post #9 of 10
10/20/05 at 8:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by geelen
Haha, I'll probably have 7 or 8 partitions anyway - two xp, one programs, one data, one windows swap, linux, linux swap, maybe macos or reactos on there too
With 60gigs? Might need to wait on the 7K100 before using 6 patritions, you may find yourself having to re-do the whole thing if you run out of room.
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post #10 of 10
10/20/05 at 10:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fry-man22
With 60gigs? Might need to wait on the 7K100 before using 6 patritions, you may find yourself having to re-do the whole thing if you run out of room.
what he says.
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