jaclaz

Dont know if this could be useful, maybe it's worth a try anyway. Try to use this nifty little tool: Serviwin freeware from Nirsoft http://nirsoft.multiservers.com/ or http://freehost14.websamba.com/nirsoft/utils/ http://freehost14.websamba.com/nirsoft/utils/serviwin.html a 30 Kb download, needs no install, can run from within a zip. It puts together an easy way to access both services AND drivers, has interesting export and saving features. Most of all it shows (both for drivers and services): Name Display name (what you see from within MMC console) Status Startup Group File description (what you see if you select the file and look for properties) Filename (including full path) FileVersion Company Product name Description (sometimes it is not the same as File Description above) It can change both the status (start/stop/restart/pause/continue) and the startup type (automatic/manual/disanle). The excellent feature is that you can select multiple services and apply the same settings to the selection, moreover, with a little registry hack documented by the author you can have different start type services in different colours: Blue All started services/drivers are painted with this color. Red All disabled services/drivers are painted with this color. Purple All services/drivers that starts automatically by the operating systems (with 'Automatic' and 'Boot' Startup types) that are not currently running. jaclaz

@jdeboeck No, sorry, but you are missing a little bit. A drive (it does not matter if floopy, zip, hard or pen) to be bootable needs to have a boot sector (sometimes referred to as boot record). The boot sector holds two kinds of info: 1) A boot loader (i.e. a program that loads the operating system) 2) The partition table (i.e. how files are stored on the disk) In older dos/win9x the bootsector's bootloader contained just a call to load the dos system files IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. In more recent OS's WinNT/2k/XP and Linux, the bootsector invokes an "intermediate" bootloader (NTLDR in WinNT/2K/XP) (LILO or Grub in Linux) that load a "settings" file (boot.ini in winNT/2k/XP) (lilo.conf or other in Linux) that gives the user the choice of how / what to boot. Bootpart is just a nifty utility that can write (actually copying it from an image it has inside the executable) the bootsector's bootloader part for some standard operating systems: MS-DOS 6.22 Windows 9x Windows NT/2k/XP leaving unmodified the partition table part. To boot a drive (any drive) with win NT/2k/XP you need to have on the drive: 1) a bootsector bootloader part that loads NTLDR 2) the NTLDR (which calls BOOT.INI) 3) NTDETECT.COM (which actually loads the Operating system according to what you selected in boot.ini) Of course before this, the BIOS must call the bootable drive, so if you haven't got an option in your Bios to boot from USB device, you cannot use this feature. Hope the above clarifies the matter, here is some reference: http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/13462/13462.html http://www.pcplus.co.uk/tips/default.asp?p...ubsectionid=111 http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/bootini.shtml jaclaz

This is a good article about USB stick booting: http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php However there are two requirements: 1) The BIOS must support USB booting 2) The stick itself must be bootable Another app, apart from BART's MKBT (which transfers and adapts a boot record) is BOOTPART : http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm which actually creates it, wonderful utility for recover of problems booting, too. I think that zips are still a very good thing to have around, I use them a lot, and they are pretty inexpensive (the media). I use them to make provisional backups of projects I am working on, as soon as the project is finished I burn it on a CD. jaclaz

I just found about this bootmanager WWBMU: http://lab1.de/Central/Software/System-Tools/WWBMU/ From my little German knowledge, and with the help of Babelfish, I gathered enough to understand that it enables the possibility of switching systems via hardware. This looks to me as a very promising approach to multiboot. Is any member fluent in German willing to translate the page and/or contact the author to see if it is possible to have an English version? Thanks in advance, Jaclaz

Well, it's quite a delicate topic, not very easy for a newbie. In my experience latest versions of Partition Magic are not that good. Moreover Partition Magic has some non-standard ways to write partition tables and in certain configuration can really mess up your system. If you want to go Commercial, I suggest you Acronis http://www.acronis.com/products/ However if you want to learn how to manage your partitions the best tool is Ranish Partitionmanager (freeware) http://www.ranish.com/part/ Using it together with XOSL (same page) and Bootpart (cardware) http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm you can setup a system ANY way you want to. Another few useful tools: Restart http://www.gabrieleponti.com/software/index.html Bootini C.U. http://www.dx21.com/SOFTWARE/Dx21/ViewItem...I=2&SI=2&OID=14 (though not stated works with Xp boot.ini as well) So answers are this: 1. You would better read all docs about Partitionmanager, Bootpart and XOSL and re-install accordingly. 2.Put the swap file on the fastest drive, see 3. below 3. In Nt4/Win2k/XP (and to a less extent in Win9x too) you can assign letters to drives from within the OS, though there are some limitations about the boot drive letter. These settings are only pertinent from within the booted OS, so you can easily find yourself with different lettering if you boot from a floppy or CD or from a second OS. I always recommend to format the hard disk so that any OS will read partitions and assign letters at least in the right ORDER. Here is a couple good links: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=108 http://www.dougknox.com/tips/xp_drive_letters.htm and subsequent MS ones Here is the general way I suggest to setup a system, found it some time ago on another board and sticked to it since, (adapt it to your needs): My experience (just read winXP instead of Win2000): NTFS is a great filesystem, but if something goes wrong, it may become a pain in the neck, even repairing it with software like Winininternals may reveal to be tricky business. This is what I normally do when I setup a new system: 1) Make the first primary partition (C: FAT16 about 1 Gb in size 2) Make an extended partition of the rest of the drive 3) Make inside the extended partition the following volumes: D: Fat32 about 2 Gb in size for a Win98 installation (if needed); E: Fat32 about 700 Mb in size for Data (the size is made to be sure that everything goes on a cd without trouble); (if you need more space for data repeat the above n times) F: NTFS rest of the space to install Windows 2000 S: Fat32 (as it is slightly faster) for the swap file size = 1,5 x your total memory installed, as a SWAP FILE separate from the System partition (speeds a little bit things, but most important simplifies the defrag process and, by not continuosly overwriting free space on the partition you have data on, increases probability of recovering erroneously deleted data) 4) Install Windows 2000 TWO times, the first on F:\WINNT\ with a full install, the second on C:\nt911\ with a minimal install for recovery purpose 5) install WIN98 (if needed) on D: 6) install DOS 6.22 (if needed) on C: 7) use Bootpart http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm to manage the multi-booting environment This way I achieve a few results: 1) I can always use Bootpart to repair bootsectors 2) I have a second install of win2k for recovery purpose 3) I have all data ready to backup on a single CD 4) "Dumb" viruses will just wipe something in C: or the first n sectors of the drive, leaving data and system partitions untouched and easy recoverable In your case putting the SWAP file on a separate DRIVE will really speed up things. 4. No, except for the (rare) case above of "dumb" malware that always look for C:\ Hope the above helps. Jaclaz