Triple-booting possible?

[ZeldaFan001]

I need just a little help finding out instructions on how to do this.

I recently updated my Gateway computer hardware and now I am getting DMA conflicts with sound when I play games in DOS running Windows 98. I have drivers for mouse, sound, and memory when loading in pure DOS, but I have to configure my system everytime. I decided I want to make a triple-boot system.

1. DOS and Windows 3.1 for playing older DOS programs with no trouble of Windows 98
2. Windows 98 for running applications that I still love, but isn't compatible with Windows XP
3. Windows XP, because it is more stable and has better memory management.

I basically have the partitioning software I need. Are there any detailed guides out there that can help me out with these specific operating systems? Any tips that I could use?

I'll be getting a 80 GB Hard Drive soon and this is what I want to do. Also, I currently have a Dual Boot Windows 98/XP on my machine already. Is it possible to fit DOS and make a triple boot with my system as is using non-destructive partitioning software?

[Pablo]

You could just run programs from XP with Windows 98 Compatibility Mode.

[Gerudo]

Originally posted by ZeldaFan001
Is it possible to fit DOS and make a triple boot with my system as is using non-destructive partitioning software? id assume if you (of course) made the partitions separate, then yes, xp, 98, and win311 and DOS could fit... and also work as sorta like 3 separate boxes with 3 separate OS's

you'd be lucky to take up 30 megs with DOS and Win311 alone...

ah the memories ^_^

[slothman]

Could you install XP on a different 'c' drive than 98? As in a hidden partition of which only one is available at a time.
Or you could start DOS from a floppy and use like drive 'd' for the games.
BTW what partitioner do you use? Partition Magic allows the hidden aspect I was talking about. I have 98 and DOS and could put XP if I really wanted to without any hassles.

[vegeta1215]

This might come in handy, its a boot manager that you run from a floppy (It does alot more too)

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/

[inori]

You might want to make sure to put the older OS's toward the front of the drive. Old OS's (or maybe it's drive controllers; my brain's spaced) sometimes have trouble with large drives, and can't address stuff that's too far into the drive. In any case, arranging the drive old to new can't hurt, and might possibly avoid some problems.

[theplustwo]

Make three partitions (if you don't mind losing all the data on your hd, use Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/part244.zip))

If you want to be able to get to your WinXP files from the other two OSes, make sure to install WinXP on a FAT32 partition.

Then, install DOS on the first (c:)

Then, install Win98 on the second (d:)

Then, install WinXP on the third (e:)

WinXP will automatically make a boot menu for you, so that whenever you reboot, you can choose which OS you want to boot into.

[AtmaWeapon]

I used a copy of partition magic to do all my reformatting, and I can assure you that a triple boot is possible. One caveat, though, is with WinXP. From what I was able to gather, WinXP is entirely unable to boot if its partition begins past the 8GB (1024 cylinder) mark of you hard drive. Also, the WinXP boot manager is very particular. If you do not install WinXP last, like theplustwo suggested, and you try to boot WinXP from another boot manager, you will get a blue screen. I know this because I tried using LILO to boot WinXP last night. Right now my triple boot consists of WinXP, Mandrake Linux, and Gentoo Linux (I'm trying Gentoo out to see if I like it).

Oh, and Pablo, I don't know what programs you are trying to run, but so far I have had only one program work correctly in Win98 compatibility mode.

[ZeldaFan001]

Windows XP compatibility mode doesn't work good enough for s***! I can set 256 colors with older programs, but using it f***** up my video card drivers and had to do a system restore to fix it.

Anyway, I heard about System Commander 7 from a friend and I will be using that to make the boot menu possible.

I'll be getting an 80 GB drive soon to replace my 13 GB drive I have now, so it will be blank when I start the project.

With the 1024 cylinder bug, I read that the bug was possible with previous versions of Windows, but was fixed in Windows XP.

PROBLEM IN WINDOWS 98: When installing Windows 98 for the first time, I recently changed my motherboard in my Gateway computer and was told that I couldn't use the Restore CD anymore provided by Gateway. When installing Windows 98, the install goes fine, but then Windows complains of missing files like vnetbios.vxd and ksclockt.ax and other missing .dll files when I haven't messed with it yet. Is there a fix for this or is my Windows 98 CD not extracting the correct .CAB files during installation to solve this problem.

Oh yeah, here are my specs for my partitions:
DOS and Win 3.1: Drive C using 2 GB with FAT16 file system.
Windows 98SE: Drive D using 39 GB with FAT32 file system.
Windows XP: Drive E using 39 GB with NTFS file system.

All on one hard drives. Is it possible to have multiple file systems on one disk?