dual boot 2000 and XP?

[grasshopperbe]

Is it safe to set up a dual boot with win2k pro and xp? i currently have win2k on my pc, and i'm still very happy with it, but it seems several games released this fall are only for xp.
Is it possible to set up a (stable) dual boot? I found some old theads on several forums where it was said that it often doesn't work, that the xp install "kills" 2000, or messes up the drive letters.

I was thinking on freeing up 20 gb or so on one of my 2 hd's and install xp so that i can play those games, and still have my 2kpro available for a while. I found a thread here on pcmech, but the link provided in the reply (to a page on microsoft website) doesn't exist anymore.
Can anyone make me wiser on this?
thanks.

[Ob1]

use your second hard drive to install xp on. since you already have 2000 installed both should be able to work just fine. after getting xp installed and up and running you will have to look for the the boot.ini file and make sure you have two entry's one for each operating system installed in order to be able to boot to each system. if you are worried about damaging your windows 2000 OS, make an image of it before trying to setup the dual boot that way if you mess up you wont lose anything.

personally i have never had a problem dual booting 2000/xp, i dual booted windows server 2003 and windows server 2000 in my test lab and ran into a problem but was fixed by copying the ntdetect.com and ntldr files from my server 2003 disc to the windows 2000 system and replacing those files so it could detect and boot up windows 2003 since the windows 2000 ntdetect and ntldr files could not recognize windows 2003.

you can download a free copy of acronis 7.0 software to make your image
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...ht=acronis+7.0

[glc]

If 2000 is installed already, just boot with the XP CD and install XP on a different partition. This will set up the dual boot menu for you, no playing with boot.ini needed.

[grasshopperbe]

seems like it worked ,

thanks for the help