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 ?
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