How to use my computer for AH and Family Apps

[JustEric]

I’m about to get the last of my build pieces tomorrow and I plan on getting things going by this weekend.  My wife doesn’t know about the computer so I’m considering telling her I bought it as a family computer that I can use for gaming also.  Of course the primary use will be gaming but no need telling her that   javascript:void(0);  So, does anyone have any suggestions how I can use the computer for both uses without killing my gaming machine?  Oh, I’m using Windows 7 64 bit OS if that makes any difference.

Norton used to have an application called Ghost that allowed you to create a restore disk.  I was thinking I could get my system up and running with AH and then make the restore disk.  This way, when my wife and kids infect the computer with internet/email viruses and applications I can restore it back to it’s original state with AH loaded. 

I think another possibility might be to load two hard drives.  One with my gaming machine stuff and another for the family use.  Just swap hard drives for each user.  I suspect I’d have to buy another Windows OS for this to work though but that might be the cheapest way to avoid problems in the future.   If I swap hard drives will I eliminate the possibility of killing my game machine with viruses from the family hard drive?

So, please let me know what you think I should do.  Telling the family to stay off my computer is still an option.  My vision is to only use the computer to play AH and other games.  No net surfing or email in an attempt to keep it clean.  We currently have 3 computes working in the house, just none strong enough to run AH. 

Thanks!
Eric

[TilDeath]

Stay the hell away from NORTON or anything Symantic.  YOu can create user profiles one for you and one for the family, or each person in your house that uses the system.  Also invest in ESET Smart suite eset.com)

TD

[Ghastly]

If you do plan to share the computer, I'd suggest a dual boot setup.  This is because the crud they install will still be installed (with any problematic auto-started processes) for you, too.

Having more than 1 user profiles helps, but not very much.

<S>

[Tigger29]

Yes, you realistically have two options here

1> Create a separate user account.  By doing this, you will be sharing the same windows installation with them, and like Ghastly said... while it will help, it still won't protect you should they pick up a virus, or some kind of malware that messes up the Windows installation.

2> Create a dual-boot system.  This basically entails two separate windows installations.  Yes, you can use two separate hard drives... or you can just use the one by partitioning it (you can create a 50-100GB partition for your needs and windows will see it as another hard drive, even though it isn't).

Then you install Windows onto the other partition and when you reboot the computer a menu will appear just before windows loads asking you which one to boot from.  If you don't touch anything, it will default to the first one, so you can set this menu to appear for only 1 second, and if someone didn't know it was there, there is a good chance they'd never even notice.  Seems like a decent way to keep the family out of your gaming side of things!  Make sure you put a password on your gaming account setup so that if they do happen to find it, they won't be able to mess with it.  Also, you can set up your partition/drive to not show up on their Windows.

I would advise creating a third partition on the hard drive as well, to keep back up images.  After you get everything installed and set up, along with updates, etc... you'll want to make a backup image of each hard drive (or each partition if you go that route) and save it in the third partition you made.  I would also advise burning these backup images to DVD's, an external hard drive, or at least a flash drive... just to be safe.  Storage space is so cheap nowadays, there really is no excuse to not do this.


Yes, to go with option #2 you'll need another copy of Windows.  Amazon.com now has the FAMILY PACK with THREE Windows 7 upgrade disks for $125!  Yes, they are upgrades but believe me... don't let that stop you.  You can still do a full install with it  (at least I could last year with the family pack I bought).

[cattb]

 I use Norton ghost  for my back-up images.. There are many other options for doing a backup or shadow image, acronis, paragon, clonezilla, and I'm sure there is more. Acronis seems to be popular.
 

[JustEric]

Thanks for all the great ideas.  I decided to buy another hard drive and Windows 7 64 bit OS.  I got both for $165.  I figure the more separate I can keep my stuff from theirs the better.  All I will have to do is figure out how to tell the computer which hard drive to boot from.  Anyone know how to tell it which hard drive to boot from? 

Thanks again!
Eric

[Krusty]

You've already made the choice, but I'll second the "dual boot" suggestion. I watch in disgust for a number of years as my family members try to use one single computer as a community resource, with 2 logins, one "technical" and one "gaming" -- and the windows multi user system is really crap. It adds too many surplus folders, directory structures, but in the end it still loads most of the bloat and rubbish into both bootups!


It's a mess when you really start using it, then try to maintain it after the fact.

Dual boot, for the win.

[TilDeath]

Install on one drive with the second disconnected.  Then reverse the operation, when the second is completed plug both in and you should get the option asking which drive to boot to on start up.

TD

[Tigger29]

The best way to do this is to start with the oldest operating system.  If you have one XP and one 7, then install the XP first.  If both operating systems are 7, then don't worry about it.

While TD's suggestion will work, I'm not sure that 7 will automatically pick up on this.  You might have to go in and manually edit the boot options but I could definitely be wrong about this as I've never set up a Win7/Win7 dual boot setup.

In the past, I simply just boot up the computer to windows, install the disk and tell it to install windows to the other drive.  Then it will automatically add the boot options, etc and then I could go back in and set the options (default selection, how long the menu stays up on the screen, etc).

START/Right Click on Computer/Properties/Advanced System Settings/Startup and Recovery Settings

[Tigger29]

grrrr