Renaming operating systems at boot

[SuperTyphoon]

I just created several partitions on a hard drive that i use for different purposes. However, they are all Windows xp home edition. So when i start the computer, and it asks me to select an operating system to use, all 3 say Windows XP home edition, and i do not know which one to pick!

Is there any way to rename them?

 

[KSoD]

Start>Run>msconfig>Boot.ini tab. From there go in and manually edit the boot file. You should be able to rename themn there and give them whatever name you want.

Course with 3 XP Home installs you might get confused. Still trying to figure out why 3? Even i dont have that many isntall's and i am a Beta tester.

 

[EricB]

for speed. I don't care what processor that you have, xp is 10x faster if you only have 3-6 programs on it. xp sp1 is even faster. xp with no service packs is the fastest. I disable the network cards on that one because it ain't safe

each OS is optimize for something different. an example of my xp hard drive. I just haven't fully set my new computer up like this. I alway install 2 on DJ's computer so they can separate sound editing from xp

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Sound Editor" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="SP1" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

 

[KSoD]

at that point it becomes pointless to even try. If you are going to only install 3 applications per OS you would have to have almost a dozen OS's to accomidate everything. If speed is that important that you cant wait a extra 3-5 seconds for a application. Build a server.

Not offense toward you or anything Eric but seriously. Even when i was running XP with 512MB RAM there was never a reason to install 3 of the same OS on a system. 2 was the max so i could beta test on 1 and have the other for personal use.
If people are that concerned about speed they should stop buying budget systems and save up and get a real system. So they dont have to do it this way for no reason other than to gain 5 seconds.

 

[EricB]

at that point it becomes pointless to even try. If you are going to only install 3 applications per OS you would have to have almost a dozen OS's to accomidate everything. If speed is that important that you cant wait a extra 3-5 seconds for a application. Build a server.

Not offense toward you or anything Eric but seriously. Even when i was running XP with 512MB RAM there was never a reason to install 3 of the same OS on a system. 2 was the max so i could beta test on 1 and have the other for personal use.
If people are that concerned about speed they should stop buying budget systems and save up and get a real system. So they dont have to do it this way for no reason other than to gain 5 seconds.

this is exactly where you don't know what the heck you are talking about. my last system was an amd 3500 4 gig ram 1000 gig machine (it is the kids system now). my new one is an amd 5000, 2 gig ram 750 gig rig. I've been doing this for 2-3 years now

what you fail to realize is, the more program that you put on xp the slower it get. period. I'm not talking about startup item either. programs loads your system and your registry down. service packs also slow the system down. I'm not talking about five second either. XP wasn't written to deal with these large system that's out now either. my older computer went slower when I went from two gig to 4. that why my new machine only has 2. xp wasn't written right to deal with 4 gig. xp 64bit is though

a perfect example

nero vision will take an hour and a half to 2 hours to encode a 90 min divx file to dvd on my old machine on the media center part with 50+ programs installed. now it would take an hour to an hour and 10 minute on the xp sp1 side with 10 programs. it would take 40-50 minutes on the xp (no service pack) with 3 programs installed. it would take 30 or less minutes on the xp 64bit side with 3 programs (all video editing).

I tried to put 10 xp's on my system once. it wouldn't let me as I could only put 3-4 on each hdd

 

[KSoD]

I have about 30 applications installed. I have all the patches and everything installed on XP. Yet i have to see any slow down in my XP with a P4 with 4 GB of RAM. I have done timing test and there is no slow down. So i dont know what you guys are doing. Cause i dont notice it.

I use a program that test to the milli-second. It is written by a friend which we use to test Anti-Virus times in VMWare. So i know that this applicaiton works right.

I have Nero installed along with Adobe along with many other applications and i have yet to see this major decrease in time that you claim happens when you load a system down with programs. I know you have been useing a PC for a long time jsut like me. If this was 95 or 98SE i would agree with you completely. But with XP i cant agree. Even in VIsta i have yet to get massive slowdown.

In Vista i have purposefully tried to do it. Running all Adobe products, Nero, Firefox, IE, Opera, and encoded a video. Only after all that did i notice a massive slowdown that i could say "Yes this does cause a machine to become a slug."

Trying to do the same thing in XP did not reproduce the same results. All those programs opened did not cause XP to slow down like Vista. So yes XP is a bit better in this case. But from what your saying is that more than 3 applicaitons causes a slowdown. NO way.I have way more than that and i dont even notice any slowdown. Even with things like windowsblinds running. Along with Icon Package as well.

this is exactly where you don't know what the heck you are talking about.

Sorry but i have to disagree. I have done several test with timing applicaitons. Which i will do again to show you. I will do a fresh install of XP in VMWare. I will time a boot up and time to open IE. I will then load it up with a bunch of junk. I will then time opening IE up again. I bet there will be no difference in load times for the application.

Come on now. I have used PC's for jsut as long as you. We have made great progress in the last 15 years in terms of RAM Speed and CPU speed. A few applications will not cause a OS to slow down that much you need multiple OS's installed to prevent slowdown on a decent machine.

 

[EricB]

I test real applications in real time. I only use these timing and testing programs to show other people differences in systems.

you can't agree or disagree until you tried it. I discovered this once by accident.
you obviously don't do a like of video and sound editing. I can have at least 10 different DJ's tell you the world of difference that giving them to seperate OS will do for their sound editing. one guy kept getting BSOD until I separated his xp's.
leave the testing program alone. just updating to all of the update on windows update will slow your computer down. this is a fact no matter how much you argue. that is one reason that a lot of people avoid windows update

my wife sony viao had a lot of program that just wouldn't work right with a fresh install of service pack 2 (it was a sp1 computer). I reformat it a lot in the past couple of years with sp2 and I could never get the older programs to work right. a month ago, I put the original recovery discs back in with sp1. everything worked right. I then went to windows update and updated through there (I've never done this route b4 as it's too time consuming). well now everything on it work, but it is at the expense of the computer moving a lot slower than it would have with a fresh install of service pack II. but I will take that tradeoff on her computer

all you have to do is try it and you will see that I'm right. you are going on your opinion and what you will think that it will do. I'm going on my experience.

get you a hdd. partition it and install xp and your drivers on it and nothing else. then activate it. now use drive image or similar software and clone that xp to each of the other xp partitions. now use most of the stuff on the 1st xp including updates, etc. then use the other ones for specialize items photoshop, sound or video editing or ringtones (my ringtone program doesn't work on media center unless I pull the usb cord out and put it right back while connecting, this is a known issue with MS. this problem was exactly how I figure that seperate OS was a **** of lot faster)

I tweak mine even further by using and xp 2600, xp sp1, mce and xp 64bit and mac Osx. I sometime will add linux to the mix

that vmware test is a joke. that's stimulation, that's not the real thing.

you also fail to realize that xp was only suppose to be the main OS for a couple of years. but it got 6 year of use because vista kept getting delayed. you 4 gig is slowing your rig up 2. xp 32 bit allocated some of that ram space to the ports on the back of your computer like the usb and printer ones

 

[TheEnd187]

Making multiple partitions also slows down access times, thats why the first partition is always faster the seek/acces time is much slower than a partition would be in the middle of the drive.

 

[EricB]

that's an almost irrelevant fact, when you compare it to an OS that does a million thing at once by itself