Hi,
I'm considering buying win XP. I currently have 3 hard drives installed, 2 of which are running win2k. I would like to keep these running win2k and have winXP on the third for a while to make transition easier (I don't want to loose all my programs). Will this work? I remember installing linux on my pc and it took over the other two hard drives (i think it re-wrote my boot sectors) and I couldn't boot of anything other than linux. will XP do the same?

Also, I plan on removing one of the hard drives and making a few upgrades quite soon. Will XP lock up? (I heard that it fingerprints ur pc, . . .)

Thnx in advance

As long as you choose new install instead of upgrade it will leave your 2k installs alone, put it on your third hhd. I would recomend doing your upgrading first though as removing a disk is going to give you a few headaches not related to XP but to duel booting.

The best way, I think, is to unplug 2 hd's, then install XP on the 3rd one as a standalone installation. Then, after you plugged your 2 Win2k hd's back, if your mobo's bios allows it, you can specify which hd will boot. Don't forget to have all hd's formated the same way NTFS or FAT32 (NTFS is better, we all know this !) so as you can access Win2k files from within XP and reversely.

I did this myself before I finally turned my back on Win2k as XP fully satisfies me up to know (not to mention that I'd like it to be a lot more than it is already...)

So, go for it, there's no risk as far as I know !

thnx guys =)
Why is NTFS better?
I mean, it does give more security, but doesn't it kill more space?

also, all that stuff about it fingerprinting the pc . . . was I wrong?

It will rewrite your bootsector but thats no biggie. You will be given a menu to connect to which ever OS you want at boot up. It will not affect win2k in any other way.
The debate whether fat or ntfs is better will go on forever but hands down ntfs is better. Just listen to the gurus here and they will tell you why maybe.;)

Just one last question
If I decide to remove winXP (just format or get rid of the HD that it is on), will the other two OS's still work?

Yes. Just modify your boot.ini to get rid of the option to boot to XP. But you will want to keep it.

You loose a staggering 2 megs per gig of disk space.

Only bad thing is then u have to go into your bios every time you want to boot to a diff O/S, just do as above, and u are prompted by a start up menu as to what O/S you want, that is the proper way, or ias i haev bene told

As for the linux issue, 7.2 has a sweet setup when u use its boot manager, simple and easy, been dualing with redhat 7.2 and XP for about 3 months now, with no issues.