On one of my other computers, when it boots, it has some weird message about "Windows 98" and then boots into an odd, propritary, user unfriendly, desktop environment. In order to bypass this boot problem, I have to either boot from a bootdisk, or click an icon located in that odd desktop environment. One of the problems is when it boots into that other desktop environment, I can not run GobeProductive 2.0, BeShare or even StyleEdit. It won't let me mount file systems from other OSes and Tracker is missing all together! :) Cliff

Cliff, there are a few ways around that. If you want you can delete that slow booting 98 stuff. Go to a command line in that os and I think a "format c:" would work or a "delete . " should too. #2 Involves using BeOS's bootman from Beos. It should do fine to give you a choice in booting 98 or BeOS. You must set BeOS to the default OS choice to avoid 98 stuff. #3 Involves making a Bootable CD to boot into BeOS. While it is quite like the floppy it is much faster. (I suspect) The reason for the weird symptoms stem from the way some computers reset or re-read bios. The boot to beos icon is a way that kicks out command.com and loads Zbeos as the command interpreter. Hope I spelled that right. It is always best to go from a power off conditon to allow BeOS to do it's own thing. Hope that is the answer for the question.

I guess my attempt at humor was overlooked. I was implying that the 'weird message about "Windows 98" and then boots into an odd, propritary, user unfriendly, desktop environment.' was referring to the 'virus' being windoze itself and how my BeOS applications won't run on it. :)

Oh, I thought you were kidding about the OS but I thought you really did have a reboot problem. I just am too serious sometimes. Thanks Cliff. Have you tried Bewine? I know the wine for linux is progressing well. It would be nice to run a few needed apps on the Be machine.

I haven't tried Wine yet. No real need with 3 computers side by side, all networked, and a pair of 19" rackmount file servers in the garage. Depending on what machine I boot up on, I can boot into Solaris 8, Manrake Linux 9, Win98SE, WinME, WinXP Pro, DrDos7 (Using Arachne to get on line, surf, email, etc.), NewDeal Office 2000 Geos, BeOS Pro 5.0.3, QNX, Peanut Linux 9 and Red Hat 8. So I haven't really had a need to try Wine. All I need now is a PPC and an iMac to play with!

Right on Cliff! On a single machine I boot Windows 98, Mandrake Linux, Lycoris, BeOS PE, QNX Neutrino, Oberon, and Free BSD. Plenty of space left too! Tried multi-booting with Solaris too, what a disaster. That OS needs a dedicated machine...

For that many OSs I have pull out drive bays and Solaris has it's own drive. Other drives have multiple OSs and they live happily together. I dont know why peole dont use pull out drive bays very much; they are great for backing up data, extra storage, multiple OSs and a place to just throw extra junk that you *may* need later, dont want to delete, but dont want clogging up your main drive.