Dealing w/ these multi-boot situations, esp. in this forum, is ALWAYS a
risky business, even for an expert. There are sooooo many things that can
go wrong, and rarely do people fully and accurately describe their systems
such that catastrophies can be avoided. With that caveat, let me comment
specifically.
After some twenty years of software developer (by profession), building
dozens of systems, including my own (and employer's) networks, and having
used every MS OS since the early days of MS-DOS, *and* multi-booting since
the early 90's, I have one piece of advice -- get yourself a copy of BootIt
NG (
http://www.bootitng.com). It will make supporting multiple OS's
trivial. All this nonsense about disturbing your boot.ini, the order of
partitions, changing drive letters, yada, yada, yada, the whole nine yards,
is eliminated. I've been using it for about 4 years, an awesome piece of
software, I don't know how I managed before it. And yet, so few know about
it.
The beauty of BootIt NG is, it totally manages your OS installations, hiding
other partitions as necessary. You simply install it, then create a new
partition for the new OS, define a boot menu item for it, and point it to
the new partition. Now boot your CD and install the OS, no fuss, no muss.
The OS install will eventually install its own MBR (master boot record),
when it does, simply insert the BootIt NG floppy again to restore BootIt NG,
and you're done. You can then add boot menu items for your other existing
OS installations as well.
Unless you specifically ADD other partitions to the boot menu item, they are
ALWAYS hidden from other partitions (i.e., OS). And since you only see the
partition into which you intend to install the new OS, it's ALWAYS C:!!!
None of this crap that you see with the MS boot loader, where each OS gets
assigned a new drive letter, a result of its inability to hide irrelevant
partitions. The MS boot loader is the worst. That's the reason so many
people on this forum ask the same questions over and over, they're all
trying to avoid the endless hassles/limitations of the MS boot loader (even
if they don't know it as such).
Trust me on this one, install BING, it uninstalls easily and will put you
right dab back to where you started should you decide discontinue its use.
Yeah, it'll cost you abut $35 after 30 days, but it'll be the best money you
ever spent. Has a host of other features too (e.g., image copy/restore).
Jim
