Hack 87 Multiboot with Third-Party Utilities 
Use a third-party
partitioning and boot utility to extend multiboot support beyond DOS
and Windows. A third-party boot management utility
provides simpler configuration, significantly more options, and a
friendlier user experience than FDISK and an NT-based text menu for
operating system selection. These utilities are intended to be
installed on a working Windows system before you add any other
operating systems. Setting up partition and boot managers is not well
documented in the two most popular products:
Symantec's PartitionMagic and BootMagic combination,
and V-Com's Partition Commander and System
Commander. To use these utilities effectively, you must
install them on the first active partition of the first hard drive,
and that partition should be FAT-32 and boot to DOS. Installing them
on the first partition running DOS or Windows 9x allows them control
over the boot process. The third-party utilities cannot
properly manage boot control if you add them after
you've set up an NT-based multiboot configuration.
This is because the NT-based boot loader (NTLDR) and menu
(BOOT.INI) take over the boot process for the
first drive and partition no matter what initial or additional
operating systems or boot managers are installed. In such a scenario,
you will see the third-party boot manager's menu
with only one selection, typically DOS/Windows 9x. When you make that
selection, the NTLDR process starts and presents the operating system
selection from the contents of BOOT.INI, from
which you choose DOS/Windows 9x or Windows NT, 2000, or XP.
9.4.1 Plan Ahead Start with
one or more hard drives that are large enough to be partitioned to
hold the operating systems and data you will be installing and using.
If you're using DOS 6.22 or Windows 95 (Retail or
OSR1), remember that they use the FAT-16 filesystem, which limits
partition size to 2 GB. Windows 2000 or later operating systems
cannot reside on FAT-16 filesystems. You can start with DOS, then add
another partition for Windows 95, another for Windows 95 OSR2,
another for Windows 98, then 98SE, then Me, and so on.
It is recommended that the first partition on the first drive
should be partitioned and formatted as a FAT-32 volume with Windows
95 OSR2, 98, or 98SE. If you require the security of NTFS under
NT/2000/XP, these operating systems will have to be installed in a
separate partition and formatted for NTFS. Then, if you have files
under NTFS that you need to share with an OS that uses FAT-32,
you'll have to copy those files to the unsecured FAT
partition or use
[Hack #89].
If you are going to share datafiles between this DOS/Windows
installation and other operating systems, make the partition large
enough to hold all of your DOS and Windows 9x applications and the
shared data.
Subsequent partitions may be partitioned
for the NTFS filesystem. NTFS is much more efficient and secure, but
native access to NTFS partitions is limited to Windows NT, 2000, or
XP. Assuming you choose to follow these recommendations, the steps in
the following sections will take you through adding Windows 2000 or
XP to your system with PartitionMagic and System Commander,
respectively.
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If you add or have a second
hard drive to your system after these utilities are installed and
that drive is not recognized, you will have to boot to the original
installation operating system and set the hardware options to allow
recognition of the new drive. Even after this, partitioning software
may not allow you to select the second drive as a target for a new OS
installation but will let you set the drive to Active so you can
proceed with the install. |
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9.4.2 Adding a New Operating System with
PartitionMagic
PartitionMagic and its
companion program BootMagic require separate configurations to
support installing and booting additional operating systems.
Install PartitionMagic and
BootMagic under
Windows on the first partition of the first hard drive. Configure the
boot manager so it is active and restart the system. The boot manager
should appear after the Power On Self Test but before the original
operating system starts. Accept
the selection to boot into your original operating system. When
Windows is running, start BootMagic. Select Add and configure BootMagic for the additional operating
system(s) you will be installing. BootMagic does not need to know
where the additional operating system is located. Exit BootMagic. Start PartitionMagic. Select
"Install another operating system"
from the menu choices at the left, as in Figure 9-11. Note the instructions that appear and then
click Next.  Choose the operating system you wish to install, as in Figure 9-12, and then click Next .
 Choose the location (disk and
partition) for your new operating system, as shown in Figures Figure 9-13 and Figure 9-14, and then
click Next. 
 Set the desired partition size, label, and filesystem type, as
in Figure 9-15, click Next, and then indicate if you
will be installing the new operating system now or later (Figure 9-16) and click Next. 
 Review and confirm the changes to be made, as in Figure 9-17, and click Finish. 
Click Apply in the lower left corner, shown in Figure 9-18, and PartitionMagic will reconfigure your disk
drives and prepare the system for the new installation.
 If you are installing Windows 2000 or
XP, insert the installation CD in your CD-ROM drive and restart the
system. Watch for the "boot from
CD" prompt and press any key to start the OS
install. If you cannot boot from your CD-ROM (for Windows 9x-Me
installations), let PartitionMagic come up and then choose to boot
from your A: drive. Let the system boot with a DOS diskette with CD
support. At the DOS prompt begin the new installation from the
CD—typically with this command (replace
D with the drive letter of your CD-ROM):
D
:\i386\winnt.exe
Proceed through the Windows
installation as usual. When the installation prompts to restart,
remove the bootable diskette if you used one and then restart the
system. When the BootMagic menu
appears, select the new operating system you are installing. The
installation process will boot and proceed from that point. When the installation is complete, remove
any diskettes or CDs from their drives and restart the system. Your
OS selections should work as expected, though you may wish to edit
the BOOT.INI [Hack #94] file for any of your
NT/2000/XP installations to set the TIMEOUT= value
to 0 and make sure the DEFAULT=
setting indicates the new operating system so you do not have to wait
through these delays.
9.4.3 Adding a New Operating System
with System Commander
V-Com's System
Commander is a pioneer in supporting multiple
operating systems on one PC. It is an effective but not always
intuitive program to use, so I'll take you through
the steps of adding Windows 2000 to a system running Windows 98.
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The instructions given in both the Commander program and on V-Com's web site are
incomplete and may seem misleading for this installation scenario.
Working around the pitfalls is discussed in the steps below.
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Install System Commander under
Windows. Configure it so it is enabled and restart the system. The
boot manager should appear after the Power On Self Test but before
the original operating system starts. (If your mouse does not work in
these screens, you can navigate and select with the Tab, Space,
arrow, and Enter keys.) At the
upper left in the menu bar, select the OS Wizard. Select "New
installation" and then click Next. The default new OS selection is Windows,
so click Next. Select the specific
OS you will be installing (Windows 2000) and click Next. Choose New install and then click
Next. For the location of the new
OS, select "Isolated by itself" and
click Next. Select the drive and
partition size you would like to use for the new OS and click Next.
Follow the prompts to proceed. System Commander will make any
necessary partition changes, then provide a set of directions for
installing the new operating system. At this point, the new partition
is marked Active and will be the target for your installation. If you
have selected Windows 2000 or XP, the instructions tell you to have
your bootable installation CD ready and insert it when prompted. Your system must support booting
from CD or you will need a bootable DOS diskette with CD-ROM support Insert the installation CD in
your CD-ROM drive and restart the system. Watch for the
"boot from CD" prompt and press any
key to start the OS install. If you cannot boot from your CD-ROM, let
System Commander come up and then select booting from your A: drive.
Let the system boot with a DOS diskette with CD support. At the DOS
prompt begin the new installation from the CD—typically with
this command (replace D with the drive
letter of your CD-ROM): D
:\i386\winnt.exe
After the first pass of the
installation, you will be prompted to remove the boot diskette and
restart, so do so now. System Commander will start and advise that it
needs to update partition records—let it do so. You will then see the OS Selection menu.
Choose the operating system being installed, in this case Windows
2000. The Windows boot menu will appear and you will need to
accept/select Windows 2000 installation. Proceed through the installation process.
In the second setup screen you will see a selection for the
drive/partition as the target for this installation. Drive E: will be
the disk/partition of your prior OS and drive C: will be the active
target for this installation—select this to proceed. You will be asked to reboot once during
the installation, then you will receive the boot sector/partition
update prompt from System Commander, and then the OS Selection menu
again. Select Windows 2000 and proceed. Follow the remaining Windows installation instructions, fill in
the information required, and complete the new installation. At the
prompt to restart, you are finished and can use System Commander to
select your desired operating system. Your OS selections should work
as expected, though you may wish to edit the BOOT.INI
[Hack #94] file for any of
your NT/2000/XP installations to set the TIMEOUT=
value to 0 and make sure the
DEFAULT= setting indicates the new operating
system so you do not have to wait through these delays.
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