Can I install my O/S (XP pro SP2)on another H/D on the samemachine and run both at thesame time.?

I run 3 H/D's on one machine C:\ is the main of course and the other 2 H/D's only store my progs and backup files.


I want to operate one of the other H/D's as my www highway


and leave current C:\ with my gene progs that are run via the


virtual drives all the way to Z (except for C%26amp;D drives), I have no


floppy drive.


My reason for wanting this is that C:\ is having problems and I


cannot use search function, and all fix's posted have not worked, and I dont want to reinstall 24 virtual drives if it is


easier to simply install XP pro SP2 onto one of the spare H/D's........hope I am making sense.





thankyou.


Mike.

Can I install my O/S (XP pro SP2)on another H/D on the samemachine and run both at thesame time.?
YES! You CAN do this! Using Microsoft Virtual PC, and it's actually a FREE download from Microsoft! Not too many things come for free from Mr. Gates, but this is one of them! Check out the link in the "Sources" part of this answer. You need to have both licenses, so you don't save money in running the two systems that way, but the Virtual PC portion of it is free from Microsoft.
Reply:As far as installing multiple OS on one machine, the answer is yes you can. I had one system that had Windows 2000 on the C Drive and Windows XP on the F Drive (2nd Hard Disk). During startup, you get to choose from the installed OS's -- in my case Windows 2000 or Windows XP. The one on the C Drive was the default one, meaning that if I didnt select one within a certain time, it automatically boots that one (the one on the C drive).





With older OS's (Win95 and maybe Win98), you may need something like boot commander. For XP and 2000, you wont the boot control program.
Reply:yes you can load windows on another harddisk as long as you boot the machine from the windows xp cd, and then while starting the machine after loading windows xp you wil have an option of choosing which operating system to run. but running both at the same time is not possible unless you are using some virtual pc software which are free to download.
Reply:I don't really understand what you're saying at the end of this but no, you can't boot from 2 hard drives at the same time. You can, however, install the os on each hard drive but you would only be able to boot one of them.
Reply:That's prohibited and won't work due to serial numbers only working on one machine.