sdculp

Do you plan on dual booting the *Microsoft* way--or use some other boot manager, or use PartitionMagic's *Pqboot* program.

Pqboot uses the technique of changing which primary partition is active with the OS on it, and hides the other OS.  This keeps both OS's truely separate--no shared boot files.  You can put the DOS Pqboot on a floppy and boot from it to switch active partitions, and there is also *Pqboot for Windows*--so you can reboot from Windows to the other OS.

If you want an in-depth discussion, see here:

Understanding MultiBooting and Booting Windows from an Extended Partition

sdculp

Quote:

I think the EULA says the software can be installed on one system--so as long as the system is the same--multiple installs should not be a violation of the licensing--and should not trigger any product *activation* events.

If you want more information as to what triggers an *activation* event--see here:

Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP

With Pqboot, because the active boot partition changes, the boot.ini file has to point to the correct partition in the master boot table--or else the system says it can not find various boot files--the most common error message is the *hal.dll* is missing.  I use Ghost 2003 to clone my OS to the *hidden* primary partition--then Pqboot to change the active primary to the cloned OS--so the cloned OS is *identical* to the source at the time of creating the image.  This method also preserves the drive letter assignments--the OS partition remains C:\ regardless of which OS I activate--so all the program references in the Registry remain the same.

Norton Ghost tries to *modify* the boot.ini file to point to the correct partition when you use it to clone an OS partition to a partition that's not the same original partition--but this fails if your partition table is not in sequence (a Ghost bug!?--or a deficiency?!)--I created my final primary partition from free space long after I had created my six other partitions--two other primaries and 4 inside a logical partition--so that final partition is listed as the 7th partition, but its physical position is the 2nd on the HDD--Ghost modifies the boot.ini to point to the 7th partition and booting fails--I have to edit the boot.ini to point to the physical 2nd partition--boots fine.

I have also used PartitionMagic's *Copy* function to duplicate the OS partition--it too failed to boot the first few times I tested this function--I don't know what I did, but for some reason it now works okay--again, I had to edit the boot.ini to allow for booting when it was *failing* to boot.  But, whatever *fixed* PartitionMagic's *Copy* function--did not fix Ghost 2003's ability to change the boot.ini correctly.