Multiple Os

[Guest]

is it possible to install say win98se win me and win xp on the same machine in different partitions ? if yes then how would you choose which os at start up ? please explain or point me to a site that explains this.

thanks dave.

[locustfurnace]

yes, ths is possible and there are programs which can help you do this, or Windows already includes the ability by editing the MSDOS.SYS file on your machine. Similar file should be included with XP, i am not positive on its naming since XP no longer requires DOS. So this file would be missing, but you can edit it under your 98 box with notepad if you want to see what it looks like.

The alternative way would be to use a boot loader.

Extended Operating System Loader (XOSL) (http://www.xosl.org/) is the world's only full-featured free boot manager with a real, easy-to-use and full-blown graphical user interface.

The link is not working as i write this so dropping an alternative link for the program.
http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/5...14550/XOSL.html (http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/514550/XOSL.html)


By installing Windows98 and Windows XP on the same partition you can easily control and save space as well. You do not ( should not have to) install each to a seperate partition, but I am not positive on this anymore. I used to have Win95 & 98 installed on the sme partition, as well as NT4 & 98 on the same partitions.

Some more freeware bootloaders
http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html
http://gag.sourceforge.net/
http://www.dirfile.com/freeware/partitions.htm

MSDOS.SYS
http://www.computerhope.com/msdossys.htm

[straight talker]

Originally posted by locustfurnace@Dec 13 2004, 05:38 PM


By installing Windows98 and Windows XP on the same partition you can easily control and save space as well. You do not ( should not have to) install each to a seperate partition


surely installing 98 and xp on the same partition would not work due to xp needing ntfs file system ? how would you format the partition so that both os could be installed ? perhaps im wrong and it can be done ?

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by straight talker@Dec 14 2004, 03:18 PM
surely installing 98 and xp on the same partition would not work due to xp needing ntfs file system ?
Window's XP, NT, 2k can be installed on a FAT32 filesystem. XP does not _need_ NTFS, but Microsoft recommended it. It has more abilities for better management of the filesystem. Its more likely you would have faster writes and reads using FAT.

On my Win98 boxes, I would always keep a few FAT16 formatted partitions for storing data, such as videos, music (wavs), program files and larger files (ISO's). This would give faster reads since the cluster sizes are larger.
Using FAT16 creates more wasted clusters, when using a lot of small files. But is actually better to use when storing large files. When Microsoft talks about better file handling, they are generally referring to small files, such as those used in txt files, mailbox storage. FAT32 would be better for someone storing html pages and alot of document files over FAT16.

NTFS adds more "security" to the filesystem, which is just basically more attributes, such as USER, GROUP and WORLD permissions. Hence a single file can be accessible depending on those permissions by various levels of permissions.
But FAT, FAT16, FAT32, lack these abilities - which also makes writing data faster but more accessible.
NTFS stores data in smaller clusters, so you have less wasted empty clusters per file, but this applies to having small files.
This became very important way back in the early days of Windows NT, when disk space was expensive and less of it was available.
When talking about a 500meg harddrive, you would not want to be losing half of it due to empty clusters, but today with the hundreds of gigabyte drives, losing a few clusters is not that important.

[Guest]

Currently my machine is running about 8 different os on one machine. But about the setting each system to be able to be booted when the system is restarted is kinda time consuming and hard if you need to use for example win 98 but you are currently have win2k at, that would force you to restart to use win98. The way i have my system is that i'm using Vmware. Vmware is a program that allows you to install as many different type's of os on your machine with win2k or winxp as your main os. Meaning you would have to install one or the other as the base os, install vmware. Vmware is an easy program to use. it allows you to give a certian amount of hard drive space (it creates a folder fooling the os running in vmare to think its the only os) in win2k or winxp and most of the configuration can be set for each type of machine. example chanaging memory size for each os, hd space, devices (cd rom- floppy drive). But to use vmare you must have around 512 mb of memory so you can spare your main os 256 to run smoothly and the other 256 to run your other os. This would save you alot of time and effort of messing with system files and trying to do a dual-boot.

I know from experiance myself.

Vmware (http://vmware.com)

[straight talker]

Originally posted by locustfurnace@Dec 14 2004, 04:37 PM

Window's XP, NT, 2k can be installed on a FAT32 filesystem. XP does not _need_ NTFS, but Microsoft recommended it.
thanks for that LOCUSTFURNACE i just had the thought that it had to be ntfs as most sites give that impression