Dual/Multi-OS boot

Stugots

Can anyone tell me how to go about setting up a hard drive so that I can select form multiple boot options at startup.

Specifically, I would like to be able to choose from a menu something like the old DOS/Windows options like this:

WIn2000
WinXP
Linux1
Linux2

Ideally I want to be able to partition an 80Gb drive into 4x20Gb partitions with the option to boot from any of them. The current alternative is using 4x20Gb slide drives. I only have two slide drive holders so I'm stuck with pulling drives out of the holders if I need to swap - messy!

Dun

Just use partitions. Be aware that you'll need swap partitions for your linux installations. As for the order of installation, make sure you install it in that order - Windows 2000, Windows XP, older linux, newer linux.

Have a Google or search Computers/Linux boards here for more info on setting up linux partitions.

Zonko

It shall be easy enough to do, read up on lilo, grub and partitions, basicly install windows first, then Linux.

vibe666

do a google for boot managers or download the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and burn it to disk it has some free boot managers on there, although you might be able to download just those from the site (or google for them) if thats all you want.

don't partition for linux though, just leave some space, and let the linux install do the partitioning, as you'll need more than one partition to run linux effectively.

Capt'n Midnight

It's best to install the Windows OS's in order the came out and in different folders and you will need a separate license for each copy of windows.

One way of doing it - skip the bits you don't need


Boot up from a DOS 5 boot disk and create a 2GB partition and install DOS5 and then Windows 95
Or
Boot up from a Windows 98 boot disk and create a FAT32 partition.
Install windows 98
Install Windows NT 3.51 , NT4 , Windows 2000 , Windows XP
When asked in the install choose folder names like Windows , WINNT , Win2k WinXP

For linux you should have left some free space on the drive and install in it's own partiton.

Each OS will recognise the boot loader of the previous ones - but not visa versa - installing in the wrong order means only the last one installed will boot.

==========================================
OR if you have NTFS, clean down any uneeded files, turn off hibernation support in control panel (to delete hiberfil.sys) defrag.
Boot from a Knoppix cd or similar and use QTparted to resize NTFS to free up space for the partition.

You can also leave the entire drive as FAT32 and use LOADLIN.EXE in a dos mode to start up linux from a bootable cd image that was copied to the driver

Deadwing

Tbh on my pc in my course i had
Win NT
Win 98
2000
XP
Mandrake linux.

Just make 4-6gig partitions (as many as you need for each OS) and install each os on them. But as said, make sure you start with the oldest and work up to the newest OS. (installing 98 after a 2000 install will fork up your 2000 etc etc)

davmigil

Space saving tip: All your linux distros can share the one swap partition.

I like this free bootmanager:

http://gag.sourceforge.net/

With gag, for you linux distro just choose to install their bootloaders (grub/lilo) to their partitions and not the MBR!

daveirl

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