best route to multi boot system

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I just used gparted (ultimate boot cd) to create a ~40 gigabyte partition for XP, then about 900 gig for Windows 7. I got Windows 7 installed and it booted fine, then I let it install the roughly 200+ updates it wanted to do. After that, I installed Windows XP, making sure it went onto the small partition.

When I rebooted, instead of getting some sort of choice for which partition to boot to (I assumed UEFI would give me that, wrongly, I guess), it would only boot to XP every time. That's not what I wanted, so I deleted the XP partition, and after that the system wouldn't boot at all. Thankfully, a couple of tries of repairing the Windows 7 install got it back on its feet.

I don't like that XP just seemed to sort of take over. I also especially don't like how XP was able to see my Windows 7 partition as a drive letter.

Can anyone recommend a simple boot manager that will let me have XP and 7 on the same hard drive, but won't let them see each other? Ideally, it would also let me add another hard drive exclusively with Linux on it down the road, for a triple boot system.

I guess I could call what I'm looking for a sort of "chastity belt" type boot manager, where each OS/Partition is kept in the dark about the others, and they can't screw each other by changing files, etc.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would really appreciate it. My kids have some favorite old games that run well on XP, so I was hoping to have a small install of it on there as well. However, I'm staying away from XP until someone can hopefully give me a clue as to why installing it seemed to hose my Windows 7 install on another partition. Thanks for any help!

 

[ninaholic37]

You might find this example interesting:
http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/multiboot.htm

Yes, Windows destroys your boot loader if you install it on the second partition, but you could recreate the boot loader from your ultimate cd again afterwards.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I don't think Windows has ever played well with having multiple boot options (maybe Windows 8 and up will with EFI?)

 

[Ketchup]

Windows does better if you install the older OS first. The 7 boot loader supports XP, but not the other way around.

However, this page should help you get going with both:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/8790/dual-boot-your-pre-installed-windows-7-computer-with-xp/

Also, don't forget that most versions of 7 support XP Mode, so you can run an XP virtual machine inside of Windows 7, instead of messing with dual OSs.

 

[JackMDS]

Free EZBCD - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/EasyBCD.shtml

 

[Dahak]

I'm staying away from XP until someone can hopefully give me a clue as to why installing it seemed to hose my Windows 7 install on another partition. Thanks for any help!

Well generally for windows, you have to install the older first then to the newer as it will update the boot code.
So for example, install xp, then install 7 or 8/8.1

Or you can manually or use a tool to repair the boot files so get the new boot menu options back

Personally what I like to do is disconnect all hard drives. Then install 1 os per hard drive and then use the motherboard boot selection option to choose what hard drive to boot from.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Well generally for windows, you have to install the older first then to the newer as it will update the boot code.
So for example, install xp, then install 7 or 8/8.1

Or you can manually or use a tool to repair the boot files so get the new boot menu options back

Personally what I like to do is disconnect all hard drives. Then install 1 os per hard drive and then use the motherboard boot selection option to choose what hard drive to boot from.

Sadly, this has been my option too - 1 OS per HD, then boot drive select when I turn on/reboot. It's what I do on my Macbook, too.

Remember: you're installing Windows XP - which is pretty old these days - on top of a newer OS. It doesn't understand Windows 7's install, let alone how to deal with an EFI boot.

Also, IIRC, the Windows installers prefer to install on Drive 0 - so if you are installing to Drive 1, and have a Drive 0, it will write the boot info out to Drive 0.

 

[corkyg]

The best multi-OS system for me has always been separate drives and mobile racks. There is never a conflict that way. Further, it allows one to have backup drives ready to go and allows for fearless beta testing, etc.

 

[yinan]

Why not just choose one OS and run all the others in a VM? It is so much easier...

 

[mikeymikec]

Why not just choose one OS and run all the others in a VM? It is so much easier...

Gaming?

 

[yinan]

The host OS would be the one that is best for gaming.

 

[Homerboy]

The best multi-OS system for me has always been separate drives and mobile racks. There is never a conflict that way. Further, it allows one to have backup drives ready to go and allows for fearless beta testing, etc.

+2 internet points.

Always done and recommended the same.

 

[Socio]

The best multi-OS system for me has always been separate drives and mobile racks. There is never a conflict that way. Further, it allows one to have backup drives ready to go and allows for fearless beta testing, etc.

Or something like this with 4 SSD drives where you can install an OS on each drive then just hotswap drives to the OS you want to run and boot up the computer.

http://www.istarusa.com/istarusa/products.php?series=HDDCage&sub=SATA/%20SAS&model=BPU-124DE-SS

 

[ninaholic37]

Since I use a laptop (and it's not new enough to run VMs efficiently), I prefer the "put everything on one hard drive" method. I did manage to put Win98SE entirely on my second partition with hide from that link. The steps from what I remember:

- Create a second and third FAT32 partition with GParted. The second can be 500MB and the third can be 1GB
- Unzip an MS-DOS 7.1 img (1MB) to the second partition
- Unzip the Win 98SE iso/CD-Rom to the third partition
- Install Grub4dos from a Linux Flash stick to hide the first partition
- Boot into the second (MS-DOS 7.1) partition
- Type "D:" then run the Setup.exe file from the third partition, which will install Windows 98SE to the second partition
- When you reboot, you'll get a "Boot device not found error", so run Grub4Dos again to rebuild the bootloader and hide the first partition so you can boot into the second partition
- Windows 98SE will start up, and stupidly think the third partition is actually a CD-ROM drive (complete with CD icon) and you can use it to pull any extra drivers/programs
- Once you got everything you need from the "CD-Rom drive", you can delete the third partition

I imagine installing XP to the 2nd (or 3rd) partition instead of the first would be similar (based on the success of the experimenter using (hd0,1) in the link).

 

[mikeymikec]

I dual-booting one or two versions of Windows plus a Linux distro for a few years. If you install it in the right order, no big deal, just look up how to change the Linux bootloader configuration if you want one a version of Windows to boot by default.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Since I use a laptop (and it's not new enough to run VMs efficiently), I prefer the "put everything on one hard drive" method. I did manage to put Win98SE entirely on my second partition with hide from that link. The steps from what I remember:

- Create a second and third FAT32 partition with GParted. The second can be 500MB and the third can be 1GB
- Unzip an MS-DOS 7.1 img (1MB) to the second partition
- Unzip the Win 98SE iso/CD-Rom to the third partition
- Install Grub4dos from a Linux Flash stick to hide the first partition
- Boot into the second (MS-DOS 7.1) partition
- Type "D:" then run the Setup.exe file from the third partition, which will install Windows 98SE to the second partition
- When you reboot, you'll get a "Boot device not found error", so run Grub4Dos again to rebuild the bootloader and hide the first partition so you can boot into the second partition
- Windows 98SE will start up, and stupidly think the third partition is actually a CD-ROM drive (complete with CD icon) and you can use it to pull any extra drivers/programs
- Once you got everything you need from the "CD-Rom drive", you can delete the third partition

I imagine installing XP to the 2nd (or 3rd) partition instead of the first would be similar (based on the success of the experimenter using (hd0,1) in the link).

I believe the more modern Windows OSes use more than one partition (one of them being an EFI partition I think); as long as partition 0 holds some alternative bootloader though, you can force things that way.

Or put money into the VMWare virtualized OS. I remember using it 10 years ago or so and it worked fine on that hardware.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

>Personally what I like to do is disconnect all hard drives. Then install 1 os per hard drive and >then use the motherboard boot selection option to choose what hard drive to boot from.

Hmm. I wonder if I could somehow use a physical lever (or button?) to select which drive is getting power, then set the bios to simply look for any hard drive and boot from it? I think this would have been fairly simple with IDE drives with their large and easy to access wires for the molex connectors, but I'm not sure any more with the SATA power wires & such being so tiny.

 

[RampantAndroid]

>Personally what I like to do is disconnect all hard drives. Then install 1 os per hard drive and >then use the motherboard boot selection option to choose what hard drive to boot from.

Hmm. I wonder if I could somehow use a physical lever (or button?) to select which drive is getting power, then set the bios to simply look for any hard drive and boot from it? I think this would have been fairly simple with IDE drives with their large and easy to access wires for the molex connectors, but I'm not sure any more with the SATA power wires & such being so tiny.

Get a bunch of hot swap bays to put into the front of your system. Pop out the drive you don't want, push in the one you want.