tri boot

[deoblo1]

Ok Nevermind, I am going to put Win 2k, win 98, and win ME on my system. Now I only have an 8gig hard drive, and it is set up to have 6 gig on the c:\ drive and 2 gig on the d:\ drive. Can I run 3 operating systems, off of just 2 hard drives, or drive letters, even though it is just one hard drive. If I can, does anyone know how I can pick which one I want to boot?

[parksie]

Well, Win2000 has a multiboot capability, since it's based on NT, so just install 2000 first, and then the others. You'll need to alter boot.ini, and keep backups of the necessary items.

[Iain17]

I think that running more than 1 OS on the same hardisk is a bad idea. Unless you have partitions set up. If you want 3 OS's then you need three partitions.

I should know becuse this is what has been giving me a headache for the last week.

Not sure that parksie is entirley correct there. Win 2k should be installed last, as i said in the other thread. I am not sure about Win ME as i have never used it.

I would probably say install 98 first, then ME, then 2k. Good luck, and i hope it doesn't take you as long as me to get it all sorted.

[parksie]

When I installed 2k last on my Linux/98/2k system...it wiped Linux off...so I had to do it myself. But yes, it's best to keep them on different partitions. What I do, though, is just use LILO, and keep the boot records separate.

[Iain17]

Yah, that is the system i have up and running now. Win 2k will have cleared the MBR, but the linux would still have been there.

Do you know how to point the win 2k MBR to allow linux as a choice in the list? I know this means that LiLo must be installed in the first sector of the boot partion and that the NT boot loader should have an option that points to it. Any ideas parksie ?

[REM]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to run three OS' at once. I mean, fair do with Win 2k and Win 98, but Win ME is basically a version of Win 98 that offers extra features that are mostly available in Win 2K anyway. Why install Win ME?

Just wondering?

Later

REM

one of my friends uses LILO,
he said it worked fine, for about a week, then he couldnt boot up windows(he has 2k/98/linux),
he tried FDISKing it, then formatting, but he still couldnt do anything, because he said LILO placed itself in the boot sector of his disk,
he stayed up till like 1 am last night trying to figure it out, finaly he just went to bed...
he was REALLY pissed at LILO.

[Bob Baddeley]

I run both Linux and Win98 on my newest computer, and it's not too bad. I installed Win98 first, then used Partition Magic to partition 10 gigs of my win98 partition for linux. Then I installed Linux. The only problem is that lilo isn't in the boot sector, so I have to put a floppy in the drive every time I boot to linux. Does anybody know how I can get linux to work past the 1024 cylinder so it will work without using that stupid floppy?

bob

[parksie]

I don't think you can get past that limit. I, on the other hand, cheated. I put a very small / partition at the start of another disk, then put all the other stuff on the larger disk.

BTW, to get rid of LILO, use the undocumented fdisk /mbr command, which rewrites the master boot record.

Iain17...I copied the linux boot sector into a file, and some tweaking and a lot of crashes later...it worked.

[CthulhuDragon]

Windows 2000 or WinNT bootloader can load a linux OS, but first it needs a file containing info about the os, partition, boot address etc. somewhere on the Linux docs web site (I don't remember the URL, I got there through redhat.com) there is a HOWTO that explains how to create that file. There is also a link to a NT program that will make it for you. If I find the url I will post it.