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xp dual boot raid 0 insanity cool down

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nudone:
you may remember i went out and spent 3 months wages on new pc around christmas time. i asked several questions at the time as i had a specific setup in mind for the new machine - dual booting, etc.

well, since that time i pretty much just installed a single xp pro on the raid 0 drives and then carried on installing programs as you normally would - nearly two months have passed since the machine was first run so now it's beginning to display little quirks that i'm beginning to get sick and tired of.

general use of the computer tends to work fine - but some programs tend to hog one of the cores on the cpu in an abnormal way (i know it's abnormal because they don't do it every time) and eventually the machine grinds to a halt until i log off and back on again. so, i decided it was time to risk the dual boot setup on the raid 0 drives - reassurance from Carol gave me good reason to believe it wasn't that difficult to do.

i think i've spent the last 12 hours (time has become meaningless to me at the moment) attempting to get a 2nd install of xp onto the computer. i've finally got it to work but i can't understand how ridiculously troublesome it was to do.

i'm writing this as a means of calming myself - i was ready to put a hammer to the computer as that appears to be the only language it wants to listen to but thankfully, as i said, it's working now.

during the process i've discovered that:

i need two identical floppies to install the nvidia raid drivers - i have to put one floppy in which then fails and the swap it with a second floppy which then install the drivers. i've checked each floppy in two computers and they are completely error free.

i have to use a very old disk with sp1 integrated into xp pro for the install to work - if i use one of a number of other cds i have made with different flavours of hotfixes and service packs integrated into them the install fails at different points. these aren't random points during the install either, oh no - they are moments specific to each cd. i've also checked these cds on another computer and they are error free and install windows perfectly fine.

one cd install will detect usb straight away but failed after that (can't remember the reason now) and another takes about 5 minutes to detect my usb keyboard and mouse after the setup procedure is finished - luckily i found this out at a low point when i was ready to slit my wrists and couldn't be bothered to reset the machine.

i shall spare you any more tiresome details.

i wouldn't complain but i just can't understand how temperamental a computer can be - talk about being moody.

i'd like Dr. Gregory House (from the tv show House, M.D.) to get himself and his team to analyse my machine - they always manage to resolve an exotic decease type situation, i'm sure they could tell me why my pc behaves like a psychopath.

anyway, oh joy, it's now working. i must remind myself that it is now working. on to the next system malfunction. i can't wait.

mouser:
it sounds like you might need the computer anger management class that i 100% need.
one time i was screaming at the computer so loud that my neighbors came over to find out if i was murdering people.

nudone:
mouser, i had forgotten about such things but you have reminded me of how annoyed i used to get too. i obviously don't encounter illogical pc problems at the rate you still do - wish i could define why that is exactly - maybe i just expect the worse nowadays. i tend to chuckle with a twisted grin on my face instead of shouting - well, i do shout but it's that muted whisper kind of shouting where your neck aches from the strain of holding the noise back.

i did once punch a pc tower off the table and then kicked it around the room until the case sides came off - thankfully, it worked perfectly too when i plugged it back in.

anyone heard of 'computer anger management' classes - might be some money to be made there - i'm sure there would be plenty of customers.

nudone:
on a more sensible and serious note...

now i've got dual booting up and running - is this going to create weird problems with things like system restore and drive indexing?

this is how i've got the drives set at the moment but it doesn't have to remain this way if there is advice to change it:

three physical hard drives but two of them are in raid 0 - the raid drive is split into 3 partitions, these are currently drive C, E and F. the other hard drive is currently drive D.

C and E are the drives with windows xp installed but i'm planning to put xp onto drive F also.

i'm wondering, as these partitions/drives are all visible to one another are they going to interfere with things i'm not aware of.

will my operating system on C become confused by the system restore files that the operating system on drive E uses. likewise, will the E drive OS get upset about drive C's system restore. and even worse, how is each operating system going to keep tabs on the other drives when using system restore.

should i just disable system restore?

i remember in the past when using some kind of boot manager (xosl, i think) i could hide partitions from each other - i don't think xp can do this on it's own but i don't really want to spend the next 12 hours trying to get another boot manager to work - unless it's simple to do.

as always, your thoughts are greatly appreciated...

nudone:
tweakui will hide the drives but the hidden drives aren't really hidden from the operating system - just hidden within windows explorer.

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