Different Boot Partitions, WIndows XP Pro

Hi,

I've never had to do this before, but for now it's pretty much a necessity.

I'm trying to get my computer (1 hard drive) to have three different bootable partitions. (required as three different bit of software need to run that will ensure they don't upset each other. So If I boot from partition 1, I can use diagnostic 1, partition 2 for diag 2, etc.)

When booting from the disc, I've given each instance of the OS 100GB (a 320GB HDD) then installed the OS on the partition manually.

I'd expected that the partitions wouldn't be able to see each other, but they do, so I have drive c, d and e. If I run the first XP Pro at boot time, it runs the version on C drive, second option runs the verdion on D Drive, etc. When I try to install programs, they default to installing onC drive, no matter what partiton I'm physically using.

I really wanted unique partitions that would all be listed as C and that each partition was unisue on C drive and when ruinning XP Pr from one of the partitions, it wouldn't see the others.

Is there a way to do this?

I hope so and thank you very much for any help

the one you boot from should be C: in all cases, so if you boot from partition 2 it will be C: and partition 1 might be D: or E:

Did you load each one from CD only, so it defaulted to D, then E.

If so try loading the second installation, from your first XP one, and then the third one.

I believe that if you install more than one Windows installation on a system they all use the same Boot Drive, which they call C:. Note that the Boot Drive is not the same as the System Drive, and requires only a very few files and about 30 MB or so. In most systems the Boot Drive and System Drive are the same partition. There are workarounds for this if you have multiple disks, but I don't think you can do what you want with a single disk. You can, of course, hide the other partitions so that they don't appear. Alternatively, some third-party boot managers might, conceivably, do it; but you would have to be very careful when installing the OSs.

Probably the closest you could get would be to have one very small partition for the boot files, with the actual system being installed on another partition. You could then hide these partitions so that each OS saw only the boot partition and its own system partition.

one partition, one install and virtualise your other installations.