XP Dual boot problem

[Mal1]

Does anyone know why I cannot install XP Pro on my secondary HD? (I already have a different XP Pro on my primary HD but this is family use, and I require a seperate one for university). And does anyone know how I can successfully do this?

When following the installation procedure as depicted in the above link, when it comes to choosing an installation partition I select my secondary (formatted properly) HD and it tells me that it requires some space, in the shape of an empty partition, on my primary hard disk to write some startup files to. Being as my primary disk has only one partition and is being utilised already (thus cannot be formatted or partition deleted and then re-created) how can I achieve a double install of XP, or does this create an MBR conflict which ultimately means you cannot have two versions of the same OS on two seperate drives.

Along with all that, the installation menu also said it did not recognise the primary HD partition type, yet it's NTFS. Why exactly?

A lot of questions there I know, I apologise for raising so many issues at once, but they are all inter-related, and I would greatly appreciate anyone who could either say 'No, its not possible' or 'Yes, here's how'. Many thanks in advance.
Michael

 

[smithman01]

Couldn't you just take the original formatted Hard Drive out of the system and format the drive that needs Windows XP? What I'm saying is why don't you just have one hard drive hooked up to the motherboard and try formatting that instead of having both hooked up. Lemme know.

 

[Mal1]

Not a bad idea.
I would have tried that.. if my disk didn't royally DIE on me. Just got a new hard drive and finally got everything back up and running. Thankfully I have the majority of my data stored on my ftp domain just incase of such an incident. The data that I didn't have that was still on the disk was sadly irrecoverable at least not without buying Kroll Ontrack. And i'm not going there.
All is well again now though. and i still have the disk with the data on just incase something comes around that i can use to get it back.
thanks for the suggestion though. noted for the future, hopefully i wont need it.

 

[jordans]

Couldn't you just take the original formatted Hard Drive out of the system and format the drive that needs Windows XP? What I'm saying is why don't you just have one hard drive hooked up to the motherboard and try formatting that instead of having both hooked up. Lemme know.

same idea but disable the hd in your bios and then foramt the second hd