Friday, July 30, 2004

Dual booting Windows XP with Windows XP – Part 3 – Making it work

After having done the preparations (see http://texhex.blogspot.com/2004/07/dual-booting-windows-xp-with-windows_28.html) its now the time to actually install the gaming Windows XP.

The process itself is quite simple: First, fire up Partition Magic 8.0 (PM8) again, right-click on the first partition (256 MB) and select “Create” which will display the “Create Partition” dialog box. Select “Primary Partition” as “Create as”, “FAT” as the file system and make sure that “Percent of unallocated space” is set to 100% since we want all the space to be one partition. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box.

Next, right-click on the third partition (with 20 GB in size) and hit “Create” again. Select “Primary Partition” as “Create as”, “NTFS” as the file system and make sure that “Percent of unallocated space” is set to 100% again. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box.

Now we have morphed the two unallocated partition to be fully accessible but one step is still missing: Formatting. So, right-click on the first partition again and select “Format”. Choose “FAT” as file system, “BOOTMAGIC” as the label and hit OK. Repeat these steps for the third partition, set the file system in this case to “NTFS” and label to “gaming_xp”. Hit OK again.

Now you will see all steps that need to be done in the lower-left corner of PM8 again. Hit “Apply” again and PM8 will restart your computer for the last time.

Once all steps have been done and you are back in Windows XP it’s finally the time to activate the gaming partition and to install the second Windows XP. We simply need to do this since we want the second Windows XP to be installed on our 20 GB partition and not on the normal system. Start PM8, right-click the 20 GB partition and select “Advanced” - “Set Active” from the menu. Click OK, Apply the changes and reboot the computer. Do not insert the Windows XP install CD at this time!

If everything works as expected, your computer should now display you a message that no operating system has been found. This is normal since we now tried to start from an empty partition. Insert the Windows XP CD and restart your computer.

Now the normal Windows XP installation procedure will take place but you will notice one difference: at an early state of the installation Windows XP will tell you that the selected partition is already a NTFS partition. Windows XP offers you to keep the existing file system so take this option.

Once you are finally gaze at an freshly installed Windows XP it’s time to install the boot manger so you can switch between the two installations. First, open the Explorer and look for a drive called “BOOTMAGIC”. Note the drive letter (e.g. X:) and enter your PM8 CD into the CD ROM driver.

We do want to install PM8 itself; what we need is called BootMagic and is located inside the folder \BTMagic on the installation CD.

Use the explorer to execute the file \BTMagic\Setup\SETUP.exe. A screen should pop up and ask you on which drive you want BootMagic to be installed. Select the drive later you have noted earlier. BootMagic will now be installed to that drive. Please note that the only change BootMagic will do to your system is to create an entry into the start menu and to add itself to the “Add/Remove Programs” list. The program and the configuration of BootMagic are stored on the drive you have selected.

Once the installation has finished, start BootMagic (Start – Programs – PowerQuest BootMagic 8.0). In some cases BootMagic will automatically detect everything and create the menu for you.

If this does not happen, do the following: First, hit the “Add” button. A new dialog box will open and allow you to select which operating system should be started if this item is selected. Select the partition on which your normal Windows XP is installed. It should have the entry “Pri – 2” in the column “Partition” and “NTFS” inside “Type”. When selected, click OK.

Click on “Add” again and select the partition “Pri - 3” as this is our gaming Windows XP we are currently using.

VERY IMPORTANT! BootMagic is a great program but has one annoying feature: By default it will hide all partitions it thinks that aren’t needed. This does also include the BOOTMAGIC partition so you’ll never ever have the chance to configure BootMagic since it will hide the X: drive where BootMagic and the configuration are stored. We’ll need to do this on our own.

Select the first entry in the list and select “Properties”. Click on the second tab and check “Ignore default selection”. Now select all three partitions so we BootMagic will not hide any of them and click OK. Repeat these steps on the second entry in the list also.

When done, reboot your computer and you should see the famous BootMagic menu with two entries. Select the first one and voila, you should be back on your normal Windows XP. Since we want to configure BootMagic from here also, we’ll need to create a shortcut to it. Start Explorer and search for the drive called BOOTMAGIC and open it. If you can’t see any folder inside of it, your Explorer hides hidden directories so you can’t see the BootMagic folder. Click on Tools -> Configure -> Options and make sure that you have selected “View all files and folders”. Now a folder called BTMagic.PQ should show up. Inside this folder there is the file called “BMCFG32.exe”. Right-drag this file to your desktop, drop it there and select “Create Shortcut here”. When you now click on this shortcut BootMagic will start and it will look exactly the same as on the gaming Windows XP. This comes from the fact that the configuration is not saved in Windows XP itself but on the 250 MB drive we have created.

Basically, that’s it. You now have two different Windows XP installations on one computer. Congratulations!

To make the system perfect, you might hide each Windows XP installation from the other. Inside BootMagic, select the first entry, hit “Configure” go to the second tab and de-select the third partition (Pri - 3). This will tell BootMagic to hide the third partition (Game XP) when running from the second partition (Work XP).

Then, select the second entry, “Configure”, second tab and deselect the second partition (Pri - 2). This will tell BootMagic to hide the second partition (Work XP) when running from the third partition (Game XP). In now case you should deselect the first partition since this will hide the BootMagic partition and you can no longer configure it.

If you need to exchange data between these two installations, simply use the BOOTMAGIC partition we have created. This data exchange was the reason why we have made it 256 MB in size and not around 20 MB since is the entire space BootMagic needs.

On the Windows XP Installation you will use for games you should only install the games, no Office or any other applications you don’t need. A virus-scanner and a firewall should be installed anyway, but not much more.

Also, do not install any drivers for devices you do not need for gaming. For example, if you have installed a Bluetooth adapter Windows XP will ask you for the drivers for it. Select “Cancel” in the “Found new Hardware” dialog, start the Device Manager, select the unknown device that represents the Bluetooth adapter, right-click it and select “Do not use this device (deactivate)”. This way Windows will never ever ask you for a driver for it.

And now enjoy your virtual second computer and start playing!

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Dual booting Windows XP with Windows XP – Part 2 - Preparations

After explaining why (http://texhex.blogspot.com/2004/07/dual-booting-windows-xp-with-windows.html) we should have two totally independent Windows XP installations on one computer, it’s now time to describe how to make this configuration work.

First of all, you need to know that Windows XP supports the installation of two installations on one hard disk out of the box. If you have used Windows NT 4.0 in the past, you properly know the “Select which operating system to boot” selection that appeared in Windows NT 4.0.

This menu is still build-in into Windows XP but it will not be shown when there is only one installation of Windows XP. Using this menu, you could easily install a second Windows XP into the folder C:\WINDOWS-2 and select the version you want to have on each boot up (C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINDOWS-2). However, this is not what I want to explain here since both installations can access the data from each other and we want to have two totally independent installations. If this is what you want, try googleing for it.

First of all, you need to understand an important term: Partition. A partition is a slice, a part, or however you want to call it from a hard disk. You can not install Windows XP or any other operating system directly on a hard disk, you always have to create a partition and the operating system is then installed on that partition.

Normally, most computers now have exactly one partition that is exactly as big as the hard disk and this is where Windows XP is installed to. To allow a second Windows XP, we’ll need to make this partition smaller and create a second partition where later on the second Windows XP is installed to.

By default, Windows does not support to resize an existing partition so you’ll need to buy software to do so: I prefer Partition Magic 8.0 (http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/) and this is also the software I’ll describe. Partition Magic 8 (PM8) will also come with a boot manger that will later on allow us to switch between the two XP installations easily.

Once you have bought and installed PM8, download and install the 8.01 patch from http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/files/npmagic/npmagic_8_files.html. And now the most important step of all:

BACKUP YOUR DATA!!!! This is no joke, no exercise, no nagging, this is true. Although I never ever had any problems with PM8, a friend of mine totally trashed his XP after playing around with PM8. Don’t wait; BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE MAKING ANYTHING ELSE!!!

Made the backups? Fine, let’s go on. When you open PM8 you will see that it displays one partition in pink that covers the entire hard disk - right-click it and select “Resize/Move” from the appearing menu. Enter 256 MB as “Free Space Before” and round about 21,000 MB inside “Free Space After”. PM8 will automatically adjust the input to the nearest suitable values so don’t wonder if the values change automatically. Click OK to accept the changes.

What we have done with this is: We’ll have made the existing partition smaller to make room for a new partition before and a new one after it.

The first, very small, partition will be used to later on contain our boot manager that will allow us to switch between the normal Windows XP and the gaming Windows XP. The second partition is the space for the gaming Windows XP itself. I think round about 20 GB (21,000 MB = 20 GB) for the gaming XP should be enough, but you might decide to make it smaller or bigger.

Finally, click “Apply changes” on the left and PM8 will restart your computer and perform the changes. This might take a while so you’ll better get a cup of coffee or something.

Normally, this step should be executed without any problems. However, it might also happen that your computer is totally trashed so you’ll better keep your backups right beside you.

Hopefully this will not happen to you, and once all changes have been made and your are back in Windows, you should start PM8 again to review that all changes are made:

  • One very small partition
  • A second very big partition that contains the Windows XP installation you are currently using
  • A third 20 GB partition that will later on contain the gaming Windows XP
Finally, our preperations are finished!

Monday, July 26, 2004

Dual booting Windows XP with Windows XP – Part 1 - Why?

Most people tend to use their computer not only for the usual stuff (Scanning, Grabbing, Surfing, Word-ing, Excel-ing) but also to play top-notch games. With some configurations this might lead to problems as soon as the one program or driver you normally need “gets in the way” of a game. Having two computers, one for the normal stuff and one for gaming solves this types of problems for sure, but you need to buy two computers for this. Having two totally independent Windows XP installations on one computer solves the problems also but costs a lot less money.

To give you an idea what I mean with “gets in the way”: My normal work environment takes round about 250 MB of memory just to be ready for work. None of the programs running in the background is needed for any modern game (Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2004) but these programs eat up memory and CPU time the game desperately needs. However, the trigger to have two Windows XP installations on one computer was something totally different.

Since I need to test some of the programs I code here, I own VMware Workstation to do the testing for Windows 98, Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 in a virtual machine. Sometimes I need the original Setup CD-ROM but didn’t want the have the real discs on my desk. So I simply created an image of them and load them on demand using Daemon-Tools. Well, this works fine until I tried to start one of the games again: No-go! The anti-piracy mechanism thought Daemon-Tools to be cracker-related and thus the game refused to start. Nice. So I was stuck in the middle of nowhere to either have the game working or the Daemon-Tools working, but not both.

Once I had the separated Windows XP installation just for gaming, I never wanted to miss it again. Friends of mine always had problems when they installed new hardware or software. I do not install any drivers on the “gaming” XP I don’t need to play. TV-Card? No driver. External hard disk? No driver. Bluetooth adapter? No driver. Since fewer drivers means fewer problems, I never ever had and strange problem after that. I can test any software on my default XP without ever fearing to screw something up.

Also, fewer drivers mean less memory consumption. My gaming XP only needs 120 MB to be ready to rumble: about 130 MB more for the game.

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Panda Platinum 7 Antivirus Free

Panda Software released Panda Antivirus for free as a “lure” for companies to purchase their corporate solutions.

As my good friend CptSiskoX just reported Panda Antivirus Platinum is available for free at this time from http://www.pandasecurity.com/zd/. Panda Antivirus Platinum has already earned a lot of awards so it properly worth a look. Of course you need to register once the software is installed but if you fear to tell them your real email address, simply use a throwaway email address.

Please note that that once you have filled out the form to get the download, you'll receive an email from marketing@pandasecurity.com containing your serial number. Armed with this serial number you go to http://www.pandasoftware.com/support/register and enter your personal information there.

You will get a generated username and password that you need to type into the options of the program so it will automatically download new updates from the Panda Software Site. Since the installation requires some reboots, you properly will need round about 20 Minutes for downloading, installing, registering and updating the program.

Friday, July 2, 2004

Reliable Synchronization – finally

At least if you own a desktop computer and a notebook you want to synchronize the contents of some folder between each two. You might also work at home for your company and want to make sure that the changes files are transferred back to the server. That’s what synchronization is good for.

I can’t remember how many times I tried out several file synchronization tools. Since I own both a normal desktop computer and a notebook it crucial to keep the files in sync or I’m suddenly stuck at the end of the world with an old file. At least one feature was missing from each of the products I checked. Either there was no preview (what will be done), no backup function (important file deleted by accident – nice) or no bidirectional synchronization (indeed, I usually change files on my notebook and want them to appear on my desktop).

Today I came across the program “ViaVersa Pro” from http://www.tgrmn.com/ which finally is the solution. Although it costs 60 bucks it offers all the features you need to keep any resource in sync. It offer a easily to understand preview what it will do, it can backup files before it deletes them and it offers bidirectional synchronization.

After several hours of testing with both a server connection (using VPN) and local desktop to notebook tests it really looks as this is finally the solution. They offer a 30 days trial version so you can test for yourself it’s worth the 60 USD. I will buy it for sure.