Is it possible to have 3 operating systems on 1 PC

[RichDem]

Hi there,

I currently have a dual booting PC with Windows ME for video editing & Windows XP Pro for everything else.

I would like to install Windows 2000 Pro to try out my video editing software on. Is it possible to have 3 operating systems all bootable and how is the best way of going about it.

I installed Me first and then installed Windows XP from Win ME to another partition, so the boot manager currently in use is the default one Win XP installs. If I run the Win 2000 setup from CD will it add the new operating system to the list already cready created by the Windows XP installation.

I hope this makes sense, any help would be much appreciated

Regards

Richard

[Bigjakkstaffa]

You could use Partition magic to create a thrid partition and install win 2k onto there :)

--Jakk:t

[BipolarBill]

While you can now install Win2K, you will have to repair WinXP afterward because they use different versions of NTLDR and NTFS.

[Sterling_Aug]

I have seen 5 OS's on one system, just don't ask me why...LOL

[Bizkitkid2001]

The screensavers has a system with 39:eek:

[AllGamer]

of course it's possible my 3 main OS are
Win2k, Win98, Linux
and then my 2ndary OS in the same drive are OS/2, Netware, Solaris, WinXp, WinNT4, DOS, Win3.11, etc

:D :t

the trick is Partition Magic, and Ghost :t

BTW, almost forgot... and a very very big HDD ;)

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Theres some app availiable for a small price that allows 20 OS's on one hard drive... but thats just silly now :rolleyes:

--Jakk:t

[Nukes]

Just backup your NTLDR, Bootsect.DOS, NTOSKRNL and any other files from your boot drive, install 2k, then replace the files with the ones you backed up. (Note - Don't do boot.ini)

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
Theres some app availiable for a small price that allows 20 OS's on one hard drive... but thats just silly now :rolleyes:

--Jakk:t

i bet you are refering to VM Ware, and Virtual PC

:D

http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/supercenter/stories/overview/0,12069,559383,00.html

[Nukes]

You can do it quite easily, but you need something to swap the partitions about at boot. And you are effectivley unlimited with VMWare.
I did see one thing though, where it ran windows from a RAMdrive, but you needed a lot of RAM for it. It spedup like mad though, took less than a second to do anything.

[AllGamer]

:D is 2 Gig of RAM enough for the task ? :r

[RichDem]

As ever thank you all for replying to my post. Where do I find the NTLDR & BootSect.dos & NTOSKRNL files. I havr searched on my C drive (Win ME) & D drive (Win XP)

Rich

[BipolarBill]

They are hidden. You must make them visible. Open My Computer and click Tools > Folder Options > View > Show all files.

[gjimene2]

oh heck yea it's possible. On one pc I had Windows 98, 2k Pro, 2k Adv Server, XP Pro, Redyhat Linux 6.02, And Mandrake.

:D Had to boot the Linux OS's through floppies because you can really mess things up if you use linux and windows on the same boot.

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by RichDem
As ever thank you all for replying to my post. Where do I find the NTLDR & BootSect.dos & NTOSKRNL files. I havr searched on my C drive (Win ME) & D drive (Win XP)

Rich

if you are in DOS

run the following command

attrib *.* -h -r -s -a

[embj]

I know that I am late to responding to this but, I saw on The ScreenSavers (on TechTV) that this one kid had 7 HD's and 37 OS's installed on this one computer.

He had a lot of Linux OS's, Windows OS's (including the OS's before Windows 3.1), and all different types of other OS's.

Just thought I would share this with you.:cool:

Oh, I see someone has already said this. :D

[Bizkitkid2001]

And it took hime a full year, and he had 6 drives not 7:p And had BeOS, Dos, and some OSs that don't even do anything:rolleyes:

[embj]

Well, 6 then. I can't remember that. That show was on like a week or 2 ago.:cool:

[sm8000]

http://www.maximumpc.com/features/feature_2002-09-24.html

Here's the link to that kid's setup. 37 OSes across 6 drives. Too bad he had to reject Solaris x86, or he'd be a real 'puter geek.

[Bizkitkid2001]

He has 39 OSes!

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Thats just silly :rolleyes:

--Jakk:t

[xenomorph69]

Ummm forgive me in being stupid... 3 seperate partitions?????? partition 1 Windows, Partition 2 Windows, Partition 3 Windows??? where are we going with this????

I can see Partiton 1 Windows, Partition 2 DOS, Parttion 3 Novell, Partition 4 Linux at least there is some variety

all his windows is NON dos however ME is 9x kernel and 2000 and XP is NT 5.0 Kernel XP just a little tweaked. In my opinion partiton for 3.1, 95, 98 as well it is the same gig

[Bizkitkid2001]

I thought he said that he had 55 different partitions?:confused:

[mykeowl]

RichDem, I have a question for you.
Is there a specific reason for using ME for video editing instead of XP?. Also, is it possible to load Xp on the same partition as Me or does it need its own partition.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

They need to be on different partitions or HDD's

--Jakk:t

[mykeowl]

Thanks BIG. I guess I'm gonna have to Ghost, repartition, then restore.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Get a hold of Partition Magic, it can resize partitions and whatnot from in windows :)

--Jakk:t

[OpK Chowdy]

on tech tv some guy had like 30 oses..some i didn't even know of.

[Bizkitkid2001]

Chowdy, scroll to the top of this page:rolleyes: