Two partitions with two installations of XP

Okay, here's how it is. I have two partitions, both have an installation of Windows XP on them, so there are two separate installations of XP on one HDD. I use one of them for things like HxF, PayPal, web design, etc. and the other for testing potentionally harmful programs (to see if they're viruses, trojans, etc).

I want to know if I open a virus on the installation that I test harmful programs, and it infects that installation, can it infect or harm the second (clean) installation?

Sorry for the crap explanation, I'm not good at explaning things. :(

+rep to all helpful answers.

Almost certainly. I think viruses look for folders such as system32 and windows and bury themselves there. Since you will have two of each system folder, safe to say it will replicate twice into both.

the safest way to do it would be to create a virtual machine to test viruses in, as this acts like a seperate computer within your host operating system.

Yeah. Virtual Machines are an exellent idea. There's no way of accessing the host computer in any way.

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Originally Posted by Stephen

Almost certainly. I think viruses look for folders such as system32 and windows and bury themselves there. Since you will have two of each system folder, safe to say it will replicate twice into both.

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Thanks for the reply, wouldn't it be like two separate computers though? I'd of thought so, but I'm not sure so I asked. :P Thanks again.

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Originally Posted by Jamesy

the safest way to do it would be to create a virtual machine to test viruses in, as this acts like a seperate computer within your host operating system.

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Currently using one, it's doing the job so I might keep it.