ok, this is a bit of a convoluted problem so bear with me.
my laptop came set up with xp pro. i want to do the dual boot set up. so i have a d/l'd copy of xp pro and win2kpro. the computer came setup with xp pro on it but no install disc. it also came with a backup utility called drive image, but it is only a limited feature edition. they set up a small partition on the HD with a backup image of the xp pro original set up. so i bought norton ghost 2003. my ultimate goal is to have a dual boot, 3 partition set up. this requires me to eliminate the drive image partition. so the first thing i did was use ghost to create a backup recovery image of my original hd set up including the drive image partition.
my next planned step is to use the gdisk utility (similar to fdisk but it's a norton version) to wipe the hard disk clean, install 2k, then install xp pro. however, the 2k install disc i have will not boot from the cd at startup. it goes right into xp pro. i have set up the boot order so that it tries the floppy first, then the cd, then the hd. it will boot directly from the xp pro install disc.
i thought about booting win2k from the startup floppies you can download, but my laptop has a modular bay for the cd drive and the floppy drive. i don't think that i can boot from the 4 floppies and then switch it out for the cd/dvd drive. i have an external dvd burner/cd burner. however, i do not believe the necessary firewire/usb2.0 drivers are loaded by the windows 2k boot floppies. (they are not loaded into the ghost boot disks i created with cd/dvd support). and by booting straight from the ghost image, i can not get to dos to start the win2k install.
anyone have any suggestions as to why win2k pro will not boot from the cd? could the windows xp pro on the HD override the boot settings and prevent it from booting? it's strange because if i start up the machine with the xp pro install disc it goes into the windows setup utility and not into the OS, but when i have the 2k install disc in, it starts windows and never gives me the option to boot from the cd-rom.
anyone have any other thoughts to get this done?
the other thing i can do is network the pc's through my wireless internet router networking hub. i believe there is a way to deliver windows that way, but i don't know how to do it. any suggestions at all? i would be very gr8ful
assuming there is no option to get this done, i thought of doing a dual boot with 2 version of xp. i already have two hardware profiles created in the xp currently installed, but i'd want to disable a lot of the background services for taping and disabling those services using the "services.msc" utility but that affects the OS globally and not just by hardware profile.
i'm getting pretty frustrated.