You can also look into Boot Manager software which allows for multiple
operating systems fairly easily. I am familiar with BootIT NG. It
offers a free trial last I looked.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html
Several other companies make them also. Acronis has a version called
OS Selector. There are also free ones too I believe, but their names
escape me at the moment.
Some free alternatives are GAG (look on sourceforge) and Grub (comes
with many Linux distributions as does Lilo). You may also need a
partition manager better than Windows FDISK. A free version is Ranish's
partition manager.
Before you venture into this area it is best to arm yourself with a bit
of knowledge of disk partitioning. You need to understand terms like
partition tables, primary partition, active partition, extended
partition, MBR (Master Boot Record), partition boot sector, BIOS boot
sequence and maybe even hidden partitions. Try googling.
MS has implemented only a very primitive boot method. The PC BIOS has
enough logic to load the MBR (from a hard drive, or something else from
a floppy, CDROM,...). The MBR has enough logic to load the boot sector
of the current active partition. The boot sector has the logic to
understand the file system of its own partition and load a loader
program. The loader program has enough logic to load the OS kernel, or
optionally in some cases (XP, 2000, or NT) it has enough logic to ask if
you would like to load a more primitive system such as W98.
The W95, 98, and ME loaders have enough logic to ask you if you want to
load the local version of DOS instead of Windows.
If you can not easily follow the MS recommendation of loading the oldest
OS first, then your strategy should be to replace the MBR with a smarter
program. One that has enough logic to show all the choices, let you
select the OS of the moment, and then do what needs to be done to load
the selected OS. I would try GAG first, but the documentation is thin so
you need to do the recommended googling as well.
Sissies may want to create a boot floppy instead of taking the risk of
screwing up their MBR. Time spent figuring out how to do this is
probably better for you than playing games anyway -- I hope it takes you
a long time
.
If you screw up the MBR and your hard drive will not boot at all, the
usual fix is to boot from a DOS floppy and enter the command:
FDISK /MBR
The above will replace GAG, Grub, Lilo or whatever junk is in the MBR
with the MS version. If your hard drive still has an active partition,
and the active partition still has a valid boot sector record, and...
your system will boot again.
Roger
