triple bootin

whosurpaddy

I was dual booting between win xp & 98. i recently installed 2k and cant seem to access 98 any more. i tried a reinstall of 98 but that makes xp unaccessable and finally on reinstalling xp 2k goes kaput. so basically i can only seem to get at any combination of 2 o.s.'s at one time.im fairly sure i just need a little editing of the boot.ini file & was wondering if anyone could shed some light.


my setup is primary hd runs xp and 98 off separate partitions.
secondary disk runs 2k

i dont have my boot.ini file handy (not at home) but ill stick it up 2moro

patch

Why would you want to have access to 3 o.s? Just curious...

I'd imagine microsoft thought the same thing, which would explain your problem

Cal

There are bound to be some boot apps ('hyper OS' have one akaik) out there that will do it for you. I'm not sure what the trick is to do it in MS.

But since you have win2000 on the secondary disk you could leave XP & 98 as a straight forward dual boot and boot to 2K by changing the boot sequence in your BIOS.

It's only a workaround but may be of some use to ya.

Cal

Dempsey

Are you installing W2K and Xp in FAT32 or NTFS. Win98 only has FAT32 and it cant read NTFS, maybe thats the problem

Col_Loki

As far as i know Win2k wont boot properly if your format is fat32, only NTFS. Not sure about XP.

U have the drive partitioned but the booting information will be on the main drive letter (C), ie it will decide which OS to boot. Ie if you installed XP last on the (partitioned) this would be loaded everytime and it would ignore the C: O/S. AFIK

Having the OS on different Hard drives is nice, just change it in the BIOS when u want to load a different one.

If you find a good program 2 allow it work on the same drive post it - would be interesting to have.

Dempsey

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
As far as i know Win2k wont boot properly if your format is fat32, only NTFS. Not sure about XP.

Win2k is running NTFS. Xp is running NTFS. Win98 only runs FAT32 or FAT(16). NTFS cant be read by a OS installed on FAT.

I was scratching my head when I put a NTFS disk in with my win98 OS, didnt know what was wrong at first.

Pimp Ninja

Simplest solution is install them in order...

Install 98, then add 2000 then add XP.

I had a similar setup, got bored one weekend and decided to see how many OS's I could have on one machine.. I ended up with 3 (98, 2000 Pro and 2000 Server) then I tried to install Linux nad fecked up the linux boot loader install (noob job) so I just wiped it and began again.

Anyway it should be quite simple to set them up in that order, but like the other lads are saying win 98 wont read the NTFS file system. So when youre installing 98 make sure that you set it up as FAT32. then install the other OS's by inserting their install CD while in the previous one.

IE Install 98 -> put in 2000 cd and select the new install option
Boot 2000 -> put in the XP CD and selevt the new install option

Whatever you do.. dont select the upgrade option, because it will get rid of whatever OS you are starting from.

Also be sure to change the default install directories. Because both 98 and XP, for example, want to be installed to c:\windows

MrPinK

If you're not going to be using one ot the OS's that often and you're not shy on RAM, you may want to conside using something like Virtual PC or VMWare. You could have as many OS's as you like running at the same time

BKtje

col_loki: w2k boots fine with fat32. Had it at home till i finally converted to NTFS.

Cal

OK here are some usefull links re. multibooting.

You can go the official MS route Here

Or some boot apps like Boot-Us or a free one is XOSL and here is a link to HyperOS as mentioned in my first post.

Hope this helps.

Cal

Col_Loki

Thats good to know B-K-DzR , Had problems myself when i formatted FAT32 and tried to boot Win2k. Got a NTFS error and just presumed it wouldnt run on FAT32.

BKtje

I'm not sure if it works with an upgraded version of w2k (ie uograding from 98se to w2k) as you cant use NTFS with win98se.

This might have happened to you tho i am slightly clutching at straws here

Perhaps someone could clear that up?

whosurpaddy

just to clarify all 3 o.s.'s are running on fat32 so shouldnt be a prob there.

as for y would i want do it. y not? i use diff o.s.'s for diff things gaming etc, i also like to keep 98 as a kinda backup as i tend to flute about with my setup a lot so its handy to have all my sttings saved.

still havent been home but ill throw up the boot.ini file 2moro

thanks for all the responses

whosurpaddy

here is the long awaited boot.ini file:


[boot loader]
timeout=7
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
e:\="Microsoft Windows 98"

whosurpaddy

heres my setup to try to help understand the boot.ini file

h/d 1 (4 partitions)
c: winxp
e: win 98
f: stuff
g: stuff

h/d 2 (2 partitions)
d: win 2000
h: stuff

does anyone no if i should be changin the win 98 line?


thanks for the links to the apps but id really like to sort this without installing somethin when i can avoid it by just editin the above file

Capt'n Midnight

re I'd imagine microsoft thought the same thing, which would explain your problem

yes they did - this is why dual boot from DOS to win98 works just once - M$ crippled it ...

"DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run..."

GRAHAM2002

I have managed to triple boot with XP, 98 & 2k.

There is a program u can buy out there that is called HYPER O/S.

This will enable u to use as many o/s as u want.


Cheers

whosurpaddy

Originally posted by GRAHAM2002
I have managed to triple boot with XP, 98 & 2k.

There is a program u can buy out there that is called HYPER O/S.

This will enable u to use as many o/s as u want.


Cheers

could you stick up your boot.ini file

GRAHAM2002

pm me whosurpaddy

Capt'n Midnight

a) Installed OS - XP in C:\windows
b) Booted from a Win98 CD and SYS'd the C: drive
At this stage will only boot to C:\
c) Booted from the windows 2000 CD and installed that in C:\WINNT (this fixes the boot.ini)
d) using XP copied the folders c:\widows and c:\programs from another PC over a network
e) reboot and selected win98 - lot of "found new hardware"

Note: win 98 was installed on another PC using those names so I could copy it later for dual boots

Copying Win98 between two drives.
Close as many wndows apps as possible
At a dos prompt in windows - Xcopy c:\*.* \*.* /s /h /d /c
Files in use by windows can then be copied in DOS
Xcopy c:\*.* d:\*.* /s <N

N of course is a text file with 10,000 lines each containing the letter N

I may use the partition utilities in Knoppix to create a 2047MB FAT 16 partition and get DOS and NT on the system too. (And Lilo for knoppix on HDD and possibly RedHat too.)

Also check www.sysinternals.com for readonly drivers so NT can see FAT32 and DOS and Win9X can see NTFS

If you are careful you can copy IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM one at a time over files of the same name on a floppy disk (ie. not sysing) - used to have a disk with dos 3.3/5/6/6.2 on it - will post when find the batch file for it