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Some multiboot questions

Muse

Muse

Lifer
I want to multiboot Win98SE, WinNT 4.0 SP6 and Win2k Pro SP2. I plan on reformatting my HD, 40 GB. I have another HD (60 GB) I plan on installing. Running my HDs on a Promise Ultra 100 controller card.

Might want to install XP someday, but not in the short term.

As I understand it, I'll want to install Win98 first, NT second and lastly Win2k. In truth, I expect to be using Win2k 99+ percent of the time. I'll probably only be using the other OSs to test problems I encounter in Win2k as I am a database programmer/developer. Therefore, I can get away with limited size installs of Win98 and NT, with little data and few apps.

Question: Do I have to make my Win98 partition (C:, I assume) FAT instead of FAT32? Does NT have to be able to write some files to the C: partition, IOW? Will NT set up dual boot when I install it after the Win98 install? I heard some stuff about how the first partition has to be not more than 2 GB. What does this mean? I set up a dual boot last week with WinME and Win2k on a different machine, and the WinME partition (the C partition) was 10 GB, and there was no problem setting up the multiboot. What am I not getting here?

Thanks for the help.
 
The C: partition must be FAT if you want to install Windows NT.

You do not necessarily have to install Win98 on C:. This way you can make the size of C: minimal, ie 10MB in FAT16.

WinNT will create a dual boot menu for you if you have Win98 already installed. The 2GB limit pertains to WinNT, although installation of Service Pack 4 gets around the issue. Either way, WinNT likes to be located within the first 7.6GB of the hard drive.

Install Win2K last (as you have said).
 


<< The C: partition must be FAT if you want to install Windows NT.

You do not necessarily have to install Win98 on C:. This way you can make the size of C: minimal, ie 10MB in FAT16.

WinNT will create a dual boot menu for you if you have Win98 already installed. The 2GB limit pertains to WinNT, although installation of Service Pack 4 gets around the issue. Either way, WinNT likes to be located within the first 7.6GB of the hard drive.

Install Win2K last (as you have said). >>

If I don't install Win98 in C:, do I have to make the C: partition primary? There's a limit to how many primary partitions I can have on one HD, so if C: is 10 MB primary and Win98, WinNT and Win2k are primary, that's 4 and I won't be able to create an extended partition with my data and application partitions. I figure I got something wrong here. Thanks for the help.
 
C: must be a primary, active partition.

There is no need for any of the operating systems to be installed on a primary partition. You can install them all on logicals inside an extended partition.
 


<< C: must be a primary, active partition.

There is no need for any of the operating systems to be installed on a primary partition. You can install them all on logicals inside an extended partition. >>

OK, so I can have a primary C: with, say, 10 MB, install my Win98 on D: FAT32, Install WinNT on E: NTFS, install Win2k on F: NTFS, have several other partitions for data and apps and later install XP on another partition... all on the same HD. What about swap files? I guess the OSs will install them on their respective partitions, right?
 
You are correct on all counts above.

You can get WinNT and Win2K to share swap files, by getting them both to point to the same drive with the same max and min sizes for pagefile.sys.
 
If you make C: large enough (but still FAT16, say 1GB or less), you can put the swap file on C: and force all *THREE* Oses to use the same C:\pagefile.sys.

To get Win9x/ME involved, edit the system.ini file so that:

[386Enh]
;PagingDrive=C: (this line is commented out)
PagingFile=C:\pagefile.sys
MinPagingFileSize=327680 ; Multiply MB * 1024 to get KBs
MaxPagingFileSize=327680 ; same here
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 ; supposedly limits use of virtual memory when RAM is available

I figure that there is no need to have moer than one swap/page file if you are not running more than one OS at a time. 🙂

You can also put DOS utilities, temp directories/files, and IE Favorites on C: and share them with all OSes without any problems. Oh yeah, I also put my browser cache on C: as well.

-SUO
 
Another question:

I don't expect to have problems installing NT or Win2k, but I'm not sure how to go about installing Win98 in other than the C: partition. How should I go about this? I have a Win95 boot disk with fdisk.exe and format.com. I figure I can back up everything and then use fdisk to create my 1 GB FAT16 boot partition and set it primary and active. What do I do to install Win98 in a separate partition? Will the Win98 CD give me the option to create another partition and install to it? Or do I have to create it with my boot floppy?
 
You will need to create the target partition for Win98 first before you install.

You are given 2 choices for where to install Win98 during setup: C:\Windows or Some other directory.

Select the Some other directory choice. If you want to install it to D:, simply type D:\Windows when prompted.
 


<< You will need to create the target partition for Win98 first before you install.

You are given 2 choices for where to install Win98 during setup: C:\Windows or Some other directory.

Select the Some other directory choice. If you want to install it to D:, simply type D:\Windows when prompted. >>

Thanks. I assume that since I'm using a Win95b boot disk with fdisk.exe and format.com from a \Win95\COMMAND directory, I will be able to create a C: FAT16 partition, primary & active, and a D: FAT32 partition, non primary, and install Win98 to D:. Then, I suppose, I can install NT and even Win2k from within Win98, just inserting the appropriate CDs. I've read about installing within Win98. Couldn't I just install by booting to the WinNT CD and Win2k CD, though? Or is there an advantage in doing it in Win98? For one thing, I think I'll want to use NTFS for NT and Win2k.
 
It's best to install WinNT and Win2K by booting from their CDROMs.

Don't do it in Win98, as a lot of the time people accidentally choose to upgrade their OS, rather then install alongside.
 
Andy: The win95 boot disk wont do FAT32 partitions will it? I guess you could partition it, but you would have to format it from the install section of 98.
 


<< why the heck would you want NT 4 >>

I do database development. I have some programs that used to run fine in NT 4 but are misbehaving on my Windows 2000 machine. I want to set up multibooting chiefly to test scenarios like this, to answer the question of whether a particular problem is OS related or not.

Also, if an application I'm working on is deployed on an NT system it may be advantageous to test on that system. I used to do tech support on code that ran in DOS, Windows 3.x, Win95, NT, Mac. It's difficult to support users sometimes when you can't test on their platform.
 


<< igiveup: The Win95B boot disk has support for FAT32. >>

i.e. If I run format.com off the Win95b boot disk I will have the option of formatting FAT or FAT32? If not, I won't format it at all and presumably Win98 will offer to format it, either FAT or FAT32 and I'll choose FAT32.

Question: What if I want to get rid of one or more of these OSs? What's the procedure? Do I just reformat that OS's partition? Will the option to boot to it just disappear at that point from the boot menu?
 
Determining FAT16 or FAT32 is not a function of Format....you need to do it in FDISK. You need to partition the FAT16 partition 1st: run FDISK WITHOUT Large disk support, then create the partition.

To create the FAT32 partitions, re-run FDISK with Large Disk Support.
 
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