Boot XP from second HD 4

[HenryAnthony]

Hi,

I installed a second HD, a Seagate 120 gb, on my Dell 4550. Both drives have XP Pro installed. Is there any way I can choose which disk to boot from other than changing the jumpers? FYI, my reason is to keep my professional files and system off the Internet. Rest of family can use the default installation and muck it up as they like

Regards,

Henry

 

[HenryAnthony]

Wolf,

You wrote:

"the true fix for this is to format and load windows on the second drive as a different drive letter than C:\ with the original primary drive still in the system ...then a boot.ini as you indicated will work fine.
and both OS's will load and work independently of each other."

That sounds like the best fix for me. I downloaded Boot-US and it is free but limited to not boot from second disk. Not that I mind spending a buck but I feel I set things up in error in the first place and would rather straighten things out using no additional software. I'm running Autodesk Inventor and 3d Studio Max and want to keep my system lean as possible and free of any conflicts.

It would be a nobrainer if I had a SP2 CD. I hate to try to download it. It would probably get infected just doing that. There seems to be no place I can download just the CD so I can do a local install. I can order one for $1.79 but it takes 4-6 weeks. I was trying to avoid the wait. Oh, wait a minute. A friend at work just told me to download the Network Administrators version and that that was the same.

Looks like I'll be trying the true fix this weekend.

I really appreciate all the help of all responders to my plea for help. I'll make sure to post back any progress.

Regards,

Henry