Booting Multiple OSs

[nullGumby]

I have a laptop that's almost a year old and I've been getting some lag playing games on it. I want to have two copies of Windows on it, one for normal usage (henceforth called "C:"), the other for gaming (henceforth called "D:")--my gaming copy would have minimal stuff installed: Windows, firewall, anti-virus, and the game pretty much. I'm very familiar with partitions and all that.

I've set this up a couple times on my laptop already, with a couple different boot managers, and the thing they all seem to have in common is when I boot to "D:" I can still see "C:". One of the boot managers has allowed me to hide "D:" from "C:" but not the other way around. It makes me a little scared to be running "D:" and have "C:"--the drive Windows is usually installed on--visible.

So I was thinking this morning, I wonder if I could have 3 partitions...make "C:" only like 10MB or something, "D:" would become my normal usage OS and "E:" my gaming OS. "C:" would be the primary, but no OSs installed on it.

Does anyone have any experience/insight into this? Thanks a lot.

[mikeandike22]

well I dont know how you would configure it, but you could use grub ive only used it with linux and windows but I guess it could do it with 2 windows

['Stein]

Hmmm...mabe I'm missing the point.

Why would ya have the primary partition as C, but not have an OS installed in it?

[nizzy1115]

I dont get the point either :shrugs:

[nullGumby]

Sorry about that...the idea of having an OS-less "C:" was so either boot'ed partition couldn't see the other. I've since learned that multiple partitions can be defined "primary" (which I didn't think of before because that's kind of a contradiction :) )--so that idea is no longer on the table.

I've also discovered both System Commander and Acronis Disk Director Suite can boot to one NTFS partition and hide any/all others--so this should work for my purposes.

Additional Information
In preparing to do this, I was worried I was violating my license agreement--using the same Windows key twice. I called Microsoft and after spending 20 minutes on the phone I was told it is NOT in violation of my license to do this. However, my second partition got ahold of that WGA update that verifies your key with Microsoft every time you start up and locked out Windows (I couldn't login, restart--nothing!) However, I bet if I used the option to hide the partitions from each other I might be OK. ...Either that or I'm on my way to getting my key blacklisted! :D I'll be in touch!

['Stein]

Heh awsome.

Good luck.