Re: Booting XP from external USB drive - change C drive?

I expected the operating system on the USB drive to end up being on C, but
it's not. The internal drive remains C with the 'works' Windows XP and the
USB drive remains E.

To boot from the USB disk I changed the boot device order in the BIOS
setting to boot from USB before booting from internal disk. In other words
to boot from the USB drive I connect it before powering on and to boot from
the internal drive I power on without the USB drive connected. Or a least
that was the idea.

I'm after another way of doing it which would allow me to have two separate
working environments so that I can experiment with the 'home' (USB) drive
without consequence on the work (internal) drive.

"Ron Sommer" <rsommer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ucigID2UHHA.920@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
An operating system gives drives drive letters.
Usually the active drive gets the operating system installed on it and
becomes C.
The operating system on the laptop is on C and the operating system on the
USB drive is on C.
The boot.ini file uses disk and partition numbers to determine which
partition to boot.

How are you switching the drive boot order to choose between the USB and
the
laptop drives?
--
Ronald Sommer

"Olivier" <oliviersaurin@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O8cJyR1UHHA.3652@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
: What I want to do is: Boot my laptop from an external drive so that I
have
a
: completely different Windows installation when I boot from the USB drive
: than when I boot from the internal drive. The reason is that this is a
work
: laptop and I want to be able to keep work and personal things separate
so
I
: could reboot on the USB drive after office hours and get my own system.
:
: I have done everything that needed doing to copy my current partition
from
: the C drive to the USB drive and this is bootable. I expected somehow
that
: if I booted from the external drive it would become the primary drive,
but
: obviously not. So what happens is that it starts booting from the USB
drive
: and very quickly its registry tells it to start programs from C: so I
don't
: end up with a different system at all!
:
: I am wondering if it is possible to assign drive C to another letter and
: then the USB drive to drive C early enough in the boot process. How
would
: you go about it?
:
: Thanks in advance
:
: Olivier
:
:



.

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