A friend has a PC with two copies of Win XP installed - there's what I'm
told is a 'broken'/'corrupted'/infected - no one seems sure - copy of XP
Home in C:\WINDOWS\, and a working XP Pro in C:\WINDOW2\.

C:\boot.ini mentions both; the latter is the default.


This is a machine where no-one has kept a record of what software has been
installed when, nor how anything has been configured. I'm trying to bring
order to chaos. I'm considering renaming

C:\WINDOWS

to something like

C:\WINDOWS-to-be-deleted-soon

so that if the machine still runs ok that set of files can be got rid of in
due course. If I do this do I need at this stage to remove the line in
boot.ini that refers to that version of Windows?



Also, how sure can I be that Windows itself is careful enough only to load
files from / update files in %systemroot% rather than "C:\WINDOWS\"
explicitly?

I suppose that apps-wise I can't be sure that none references C:\WINDOWS
directly either, but at least with apps I should be able to uninstall/
reinstall/ reset/ reconfigure things as needed...


Also, if the rename (and/or eventual deletion of C:\WINDOWS) works, would it
later be safe to rename C:\WINDOW2 to C:\WINDOWS ? I presume that would
only be possible in safe mode or with a linux live CD? Clearly boot.ini
would need to be updated at the same time - or perhaps I could have two
lines in boot.ini both with the same parameters apart from the folder name
so that one would always match the available folder?



All advice gratefully received...


--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

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