Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Atlantic Rim
Posts: 570

Duel Boot?

One reason I am considering purchasing a new computer is that many of the games my kid's play (all children's titles....Humongous Entertainment,etc.) are atrociously written...ridden with memory leaks, adware, and "little runtime gifts" in my system tray. I hate having to re-jigger my machine to keep essential home and work applications working at anywhere near optimum levels.

Next week I will be doing a long overdue system douche (reformatting the hard drive) before installing a fresh version of Windows XP.

It occurs to me that if I either set up a duel boot or multi-user system, I can sheild myself on the business/household side of a partition, while the game-laden side wreaks havoc on its own little corner of the hard drive.

Is this the answer to my problems? Is there a difference between a multi-user and duel-boot system? If so, which is better?

Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 58

Re: Duel Boot?

quote:

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Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
It occurs to me that if I either set up a duel boot or multi-user system, I can sheild myself on the business/household side of a partition, while the game-laden side wreaks havoc on its own little corner of the hard drive.

Is this the answer to my problems? Is there a difference between a multi-user and duel-boot system? If so, which is better?

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A dual-boot system is probably the better idea of the two if you're concerned with keeping your business/household system clean; If you set up multiple users on the same installation of an OS, you can restrict access to your own personal files, but programs installed by other users can clutter up the OS for everyone.

With a dual boot system, you would have two completely separate copies of the OS (Hmm, you probably can't do that with Windows XP. But you could use WinXP on one partition, and an older version on the other. Or better yet, Linux ) The kids boot into their system, and there's not even the slightest chance they could do anything to muck up your business or household files or programs, since they're on a different partition entirely. Your system stays nice and clean.

Another option is this nifty hardware solution I read about on Slashdot a few months ago: http://www4.tomshardware.com/storag...0727/index.html - Same idea as a dual-boot system, but in this case you have two separate harddrives, which are connected to a physical switch with a key lock. When it's the kids' turn, you switch the selector over to their hard drive and remove the key; there's no chance they could even accidentally boot into your partition. I think there's also a switch position that disables *both* hard drives, which would come in handy if you need to limit time spent on the computer.

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Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

I agree dual boot is the way..
I even have it myself just to be more platform independent..

Another option (next to the HD key) would be to get swappable HD's. The kids get their HD an you get yours.. that way your data is as safe as it can be....

It is going to cost you extra $ though..

Cheap sollution is to have dual boot. Win98SE for the kids and XP for you. create 2 (or more partitions) and format yours to NTFS and the kids to FAT(32) that way the kids cannot see yours.
Make sure it default boots to Win98... and use the XP security wisely...

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Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

quote:

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Originally posted by ToolkiT
Cheap sollution is to have dual boot. Win98SE for the kids and XP for you. create 2 (or more partitions) and format yours to NTFS and the kids to FAT(32) that way the kids cannot see yours.
Make sure it default boots to Win98... and use the XP security wisely...

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Or even better, dual boot 98SE and Windows 2000. You get to use the NTFS system so that they can't see your system, and at the same time, you have a supported OS (sorry, I hate XP ). Then use the default as 98SE.

BEN

PS. Currently, I dual boot 98SE and 2k, with 2k on NTFS, and a third partition in FAT32 so that I can transfer big documents between the two. Has been working like a charm for a while now