Hello, I have 2 HD, primary HD is 810MB, slave HD 8.4GB. The primary HD (C:) is active partition formatted as FAT, and the boot.ini is located in C:, while WINNT files are in E:\WINNT, E: was intended to be formatted as NTFS during installation. The file systems for the 2HD are planned as follows: 1st HD (C:) - FAT (boot-up purpose, size 810MB) 2nd HD (D:) - FAT32 (Win 98, size 3.5GB) (2nd partition) - Linux native, size 2GB (3rd partition) - Linux swap, size 127MB (E:) - NTFS (Win NT 4.0, size 2.7GB) Problem is: NT cannot go on installation. Previously, I have installed Win 98 and Win NT only, and they worked well; but after installing Linux, Win NT cannot boot-up, error is 0x00007B,'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE'. That is, I can boot-up Win 98 and Linux (using Loadlin) with no problems. The only problem is I cannot either go on NT install (partition after Linux) or boot-up (partition prior to Linux). I am thinking of installing Linux in a partition of 1st HD, and the 2 other OS in 2nd HD, this will eliminate the problem, but since 1st HD is of size 810 MB, even though the partition for boot-up purpose is very small, less-than-1GB HD is not enough for Linux. Please give some advice. Thanks. Chris :)

Check out: http://www.winplanet.com/features/howtos/ntdirectboot/index.html

INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE is a bug in lilo!! Upgrade to the latest lilo to fix.

As far as I know, you cannot use LILO to boot into Windows NT. I tried it and the farthest I got was a BSOD. You CAN, however, install LILO in the root or /boot partition of your Linux installation and use NT Loader to boot all three systems. I have done this dozens of times on many different systems, and it works like a charm (my current system uses NT Loader to boot Win98, WinNT, and Linux). For detailed instructions, try http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader. If you can't find the how to, drop me a line and I'll spell it out for you in detail.

Sorry, I didn't read your question very well. You can install NT anywhere you like, as long as the first partition on the primary drive is accessible to WinNT (eg. FAT 16 or NTFS) This is because the only way to boot NT is with NT Loader, which has to live in the MBR. You can use NT Loader to boot Win9x and Linux. You should install Win9x first, as Win9x will overwrite the MBR. Use FAT 16 for the Win9x partition(s), as NT has to be able to access the C: partition (Alternatively, you can make a small DOS C: partition (200MB is more than enough)to use as a boot/shared partition, then use NTFS for NT, FAT32 for Win9x, and ext2 for Linux, effectively isolating the OSes from each other.) You can use LILO, instead of Loadlin, to boot Linux. Make sure to install LILO in the root or /boot partition of your Linux install (NOT in the MBR), but be careful to make sure that the entire partition that LILO is in resides below cylinder 1024. My advice would be to use the second hard drive for the / , /boot (if applicable), and /opt or /var partitions, and put /usr and /home in a larger partition at the end of your large drive, since it is probably newer and faster and /usr and /home get a lot of use. The page I referenced in the above posting will help you get NT Loader and LILO to live together on the same machine. Hope this helps.

Try using a program such as partition magic, it comes with a boot manager.

I agree. I'm using System Commander Deluxe, and it works fine for me. I am able to boot DOS, Windows NT, Windows 98, and Linux with no problem.