Information about bootmagic software for multiple OS

[chickens]

Hi,

I am newbie with using multiple Operating Systems.
Till now I have 2 OS installed on 2 different drives.
I have windows XP pro on C: & Ubuntu on another.
Now the problem is I want to have windows XP 64bit to be installed along with these 2 operating systems. My friend suggested me to use bootmagic software but I really don't have any Idea about this software & how to use it?
How does this helps? & works?

Thanks in advance.

[Zombi]

What is Boot Magic.Net ?

BootMagic is a commercial bootloader included with many partitioning programs. A boot manager is a piece of software that is loaded each time that a PC is booted. This bootloader must be installed using Windows, and may be installed and configured after you have installed Linux in a separate partition. The software allows the user to select which operating system to run on a multiple boot system.

BootMagic Basics

BM must be installed on a FAT or a FAT32 partition on the first hard disk drive; BM can't be installed on an NTFS partition. Like other boot managers, BootMagic replaces the hard disk Master Boot Record (MBR) with a custom program. This displays the startup menu from which a user can select a preferred operating system and then launches it. BM will stop working if a PC contracts a boot sector virus or if a user installs an operating system that re-writes the MBR. When a Microsoft operating system is installed it will re-write the MBR. Fortunately it is straightforward to re-install BM from the CFS Deployment Tools Server.

[rupak]

As you said you have multiple OS installed on your system. In such case you must see what are the OS you have installed? If you have installed different windows versions then windows boot manager will take care of the boot thing. But Windows boot loader is setting a default OS. The importance of boot manager utility is when you are installing different kind of OS on a single machine. Like your case, Windows & Linux. You need Boot manager utility & bootmagic software is exactly for this thing. Hence it comes with many partitioning programs.

[Rail racer]

How to install BootMagic


1. Insert the PartitionMagic CD in your CD drive.
2. Click BootMagic from the PartitionMagic setup screen, then click Install to launch the BootMagic installation program.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions to install BootMagic. BootMagic can be installed to any FAT or FAT32 partition (primary or logical). If your system only has NTFS partitions, see How to install BootMagic on an NTFS system, or consider using PQBoot for Windows instead of BootMagic. See "Switching between Bootable Partitions with PQBoot" on page 86 of the PartitionMagic 8.0 User's Guide.
4. After installation is complete, click Back > Exit to close the setup screen.