two different setups?

[dbarton]

I want XP set up so that one user profile boots up to a fully loaded machine with Norton, firewall etc.

A different user boots up to a bare machine.. Just the OS basically.

I don't see that Windows allows this in any way. Is there some good way to do this? Hardware profiles maybe?

 

[Billb2]

The easiest way is to dual boot a slipstreamed second install.
I've used a second XP sp2 install for benchmarking that ran nothing but 4 services.

 

[g8wayrebel]

Use a virtual install. You can boot into the second OS without any concerns for security and just delete it and reinstall when it has issues. Micro crap offers it as well do third party programs and it is fairly well proven. You won't have to go through the dual boot or have any security concerns that way.

 

[dbarton]

Any idea where to look for info on virtual install?

Do you mean somethling like Virtual PC?

Seems like another layer would just slow things down, no?

 

[thegorx]

maybe think of virtualizing or isolating your internet and security
or maybe get a better AV software, something that's not a total resource hog and one that works better than Norton, maybe something with "game mode" if that's what we're talking.

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: dbarton
Any idea where to look for info on virtual install?

Do you mean somethling like Virtual PC?

Seems like another layer would just slow things down, no?

Yes, but probably not as much as one would assume.

 

[dbarton]

I installed Virtual PC and I guess I could use that for the internet, so I could remove firewall and Norton from main machine..

The downside is that booting up is now booting the real machine, and then also virtual machine to get on the net..

I don't see a way to have VPC autoboot.

Is VMware Server better than VPC in any way?

 

[dbarton]

Anothetr thing I tried: I have two hardware profiles on my machine. One boots with the regular services. The other boots with a very minimal set of hardware and services.
When I boot the minimal set I also chose a different USER profile that is very minimal as well.

I'd love for the machine to see which *hardware* profile was loaded and load the matching *USER* profile.

I don't see any way to do that.