How do I set up a Multi-boot PC (Win95/Win98SE/WinXP-Pro 32x/WinXP-Pro 64x/Vista)

[Backdoorman53200]

Hi there:

Single-father of 3 sons who LOVE playing PC games here... With a little help from a friend - I just built a nice PC for my family to enjoy for PC Gaming & to serve as a Multi-Media Entertainment Center in our living room.

It's running a dual core Athlon 3000+ CPU, 2Gb of paired SLI-certified DDR2 RAM, (2) 256mb nVidia 8600 Ultra video cards with the SLI toggle connecting the 2 cards, & (2) 500GB Maxtor IDEE Hard Drives - on a DFI LanParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G motherboard - with WinXP-Pro 64x installed.

However, given that many of my sons' favorite games are Win95 or Win98 or WinXP 32x based, and won't run on WinXP-Pro 64x, and that I want to learn how to use & work with the new Vista OS - I'd like to set this PC up as a multi-boot PC with all 5 OS's on it (unless installing Win95 & Win 98SE is redundant).

However, I'm only a mid-level amateur PC operator and have never set up a multi-boot PC before, and my friend who helped me build the PC doesn't want to deal with the headache of helping me set-up a multi-boot system... Can anyone answer a few questions that I have & help walk me through this process ?

I have Partition Magic 8 Pro and a Maxtor Data Tools-disc to use to set up the multiple partitions - Where do I go from there ?

Can I leave the WinXP-Pro 64x OS thats installed on the C:drive - or do I have to reformat & start from scratch ?

Also, the friend who helped me build the PC repeatedly stressed to me his advice that I NOT try to install more than 3 partitions onto a single Hard Drive if I want a trouble-free PC... But, given that he's a rather anal-retentive PC Tech - I know that He's a very conservative both in how he builds & runs PC's, and in his advice to me because I'm not a high-level PC user.

However, when I looked up multi-boot PC installation on the internet - I saw instructions for the installation of a 3 OS PC (98, XP 32x & Linux) that included 5 partitions in the following configuration:

Partition.... Size.... Format.... Operating System

1............. 4 GB.... FAT32.... Windows 98

2............. 4 GB.... NTFS..... Windows XP or Windows 2000

3............. 8 GB.... EXT3..... Linux / BSD

4........... 12 GB.... FAT32.... Shared Programs

5........... 12 GB.... FAT32.... Shared Data

So, my question is - Can I (and if so, up to how many) install more than 3 OS's onto a PC's single Hard-Drive & How many partitions can I successfully install & operate without having problems that would take a professional PC tech to fix ?

[itpro2007]

Ya know, If I were you, I would really consider loading up a virtual machine program such as vmware, or microsofts virtual pc. It will let you load all those OS's. I have vmware with 95, 98, me, all 2000 OS's, server 2003 (servers and desktop) xp and vista, and a few linux distros. They will also with 64bit systems. Check em out....
http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

They work really well and are cool. They are both a program that let's you install OS's in the program and work as NORMAL. I love vmware...love it love it love it.

P.S. Dual boot is overrated and almost considered legacy now. I believe microsoft's virtual pc is free and vmware is about 50-60 bucks. Hope it helps.

[Backdoorman53200]

So, your suggesting that instead of sectioning my pc into multiple OS's that run one at a time - that I instead load a virtual machine that will allow me to run more than one OS at the same time ?

What your describing - if I understand you - sounds like running an gaming system emulator to allow you to play: nes, snes, ps, ps2, et al... on a PC - like my eldest son (the PC geek - not the 2 LD boys) used to do back when he was in his early teens.

My question is: If I take that approach instead of running one OS at a time - wont that place an incredible drain on my system resources to run multiple OS's at the same time ?

The Virtual Machine sounds like it would solve the Win95 & 98 gaming problem easily - but I'm concerned that WinXP-32x & Vista-32x & 64x will be too much to run at the same time as WinXP-64x.

I collect media & do a lot of conversion & custom dvd compilation to create archival copies of all my family's favorite media (anime', sci-fi, tv-shows, movies, etc.) and almost all of these WinXP-32x programs that create these dont work on WinXP-64x & they are system resource intensive... Will I be able to run them in virtual-mode without the quality of the resulting video files being degraded ?

[itpro2007]

Yep, it's a load full, but; If you dual boot you can only work with one OS at a time, right? I have a network of 12 OSs running at the same time. I do it as a lab for study purposes. I don't suggest running games on all those at the same time, besides you can only play one game at a time, correct? Basically I'm saying that if you want to install several different OSs and have different games installed, great! I usually burn a lot of disks (movies) and different things at the same time (i have a p4 3g with 3g of ram) and everything runs smooth. Look at exactly what you want to do. And yes, you can put in 12 hard disks and boot to whichever one you want. Start with the newest OS (vista) and work your way down so the boot file are written properly. Or fiddle around with vmware or virtual pc and see if you like it. You can have as many OSs installed and available as you want. Run one at a time. That will not bog down your system.

[itpro2007]

Watch this youtube video..not the best resolution but you'll get the idea. He loads up Ubuntu linux, which i have also, but you can load up any OS you want(as long as vmware has it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5H2KMX6Ek

[KAOSMAN]

Another vote for virtualizing here!!! I'm no hardware god but I'm betting that the 64bit os partition you already have will be a problem. Also, not all the latest hardware can run legacy PnP operating systems. This is because some bus architecture has evolved beyond the point where 9x setup can actually load to it out of the box. Not to mention the fact that 9x PnP was flaky at best and if you introduce a lot of these older drivers into your system natively you will be asking for trouble. Better to load all this up in VM where you have some protection from corruption and kernel crashes. VM is like a java sandbox in that no matter what fails inside the vm your host OS still survives. Have a problem you cant resolve in your VM? you can delete the VM files and build from scratch, or load a previously saved backup, but your host OS still runs and is not dependant on a custom boot.ini or other such files, you can research to resolve and troubleshhot on the fly using online resources. To me, its a no brainer to go this route.