How do I isolate 4 seperate Win 2K installations on same disk?

[Cidex]

Hello
I recently switched over to Windows 2000 Pro from my old multiboot Win 98Se set-up. I was using Partition Magic 7 & Boot Magic to control 4 completely seperate installations of Win 98SE . (This always kept my data safe from other users on this computer ) it also made it easy to reinstall a fresh copy of windows which was already updated and ready to go (This was one of the 4 copies on the drive).

After a complete reformat and installation of Windows 2000 Pro (And all of the updates) I Installed Partition Magic next, then made 4 partitions on the new drive and copied via Partition Magic Win 2K to all 4 of the Partitions. Now after a little bit of editing of the boot.ini file I'm able to boot from any of the four copies just like I used to with the Win 98SE setup. My drives with Win 2K on them are now C,E,F,G (everything great to this point)

My biggest problem is there doesnt seem to be any isolation of volumes like i had.. for instance I decided to install a program while logged in to drive F I point everything to install on F but the installation always ends up on volume C. Is it possible to completely isolate the multiple installations? In the past sometimes I liked to test programs on an isolated drive then if I had problems all I had to do was delete that partition and copy over a copy of a good windows partiton by using Partition Magic (about 5 min) and it was ready to go again. If anyone knows how to make this work or if it just cant be done please let me know... any info is appreciated. Thanks

 

[MrChad]

There are much, MUCH easier ways to keep your data safe with Windows 2000.

If you set up each of your users as limited accounts (i.e. not administrators), you can set up permissions on your folders to ensure that only your account has access to your data. Limited accounts also protect you from spyware infections.

If you want true isolation for an OS test bed, consider investing in a copy of VMWare or Virtual PC. This allows you to create a truly isolated environment that you can set up, mess up, blow away and restore quickly.