Wraith:
Not sure from what you're saying if this what you're doing, but the best way to achieve what you want is to
install a second copy of XP (yes, it's ok to use the same physical copy of XP twice - the license is per-machine, not per-install)
on the 20Gb drive.
After you've done that, when you boot up
you will then get a text-menu which will give you the
option of booting into either your current install or the new install on the 20Gb drive.
At this point you'll probably get a bit confused because the two options will say exactly the same thing - just boot into either one of them...
Then find the
boot.ini file that will be in the
root directory of your current XP install drive (you may need to tell Explorer to show hidden and/or system files in order to see it)
Open
boot.ini into
notepad (it's just a text document) and you'll see two lines that say something like:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Sorry, I can't remember exactly what it says where I've written "Windows XP" - that's because what you need to do is change those to say something different, eg:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Other/Work/Whatever" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="BF2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
(you may want to change them one at time to make sure you get them the right way round, but your 20Gb drive install will probably be the second of the two)
Also, make sure you do not change anything else - just the bit between the quote ("") marks!Then you can just boot into the BF2 XP, and install BF2 and all expansion packs into that install and they'll automatically go into the right place on the 20Gb drive.
The other benefit to this is that you can also defrag the BF2 install more effectively from the Other/Work/Whatever install - after installing - just reboot into the Other/Work/Whatever install and tell it to defrag the other drive - this causes it defrag more effectively because windows won't have files locked open on that drive (defrag can't move open files).
And then, likewise, you can defrag the Other/Work/Whatever install more effectively from the BF2 install.
Also, having a whole seperate install of XP just for BF2 means you can do many other tweaks to optimize that install for BF2 without fear of breaking it for anything else you do with your PC...
Of course, if you only use your PC for BF2, then the whole of what you're trying to achieve is kind of pointless and you need to do a complete reinstall of everything and defrag defrag defrag as you go...
Last edited by Scorpion0x17 (2006-09-30 15:07:30)