I don't know much about setting up multiple systems eventhough I'm trying. I'm mainly a Mac guy that bought a Wintel PC because of cost factors. In the Mac we don't deal with so many tweaks and configurations, there is no need. I do have one word of caution derived from experience.
1) Maxtors drive use what is called an overlay bios (EZ-Bios). I don't know exactly what it is,but I do know it is a non-standard way of reading the way your hardrive is formatted.
If you look at the Maxtor in DOS it will tell you it is NON-DOS formatted. Problems by some utilities and recognition by WindowsOS MAY arise. It is not supposed to but it does.
You may or may not have problems when you try to instal Win2000 on it. The Maxtor floppy that I have has 2 button-lights, one for formatting the disk the other I think is called Advance. If you click on the Advance you will get to a menu that says ENABLE EZ-BIOS. I would switch that to DISABLED. A DOS boot-up will now read the hardrive as DOS formatted.
2) Keep a written record for each drive of its parameters Cylinders,Head,Precomp.,Landz,Sect. for each mode LBA-Normal-Large (Model number). This is handy to keep if you need to configure your Computer Bios at booting time when you press delete.
3)There is a DOS program that saves your computer Booting Sector (Which will be modified by BootMagic or SystemCommander,Win2000 setup) called Bootsave made by a Canadian. It also has a CMOSsave. With this you can easily restore both booting sector and your CMOS setting without much fuzz
4) WinME does not give you the ability to go into DOS. Here is a patch that will do that:
http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/
Print it and read it carefully
5)Get a copy of the following programs from ERS (ERS98,ERSWinME,ERS2000) It is a backup utility that saves all your system files in case something becomes corrupted or is written over. The backup files of your system are kept in a folder called 1ERS,since you will have a copy of this program for each OS you should rename the folder different for each ERS OS flavor so that at backup time the program is not confused. Write the name of each folder (Like 1ERS,2ERS,3ERS, or 1ERS98,1ERSME,1ERS2k, make a name that makes sense to you.Also to invoke the program to restore your files the default command at DOS is simply ERS, but you should change this to not confuse the program again to ERS98,ERSME,ERS2k). It will become obvious when you go through the set-up. Know that there are other programs like Norton,Fix-It etc that do system backup, but I strongly recommend that you also use ERS.There may be times none of the commercial products may run but ERS will because it is launched at restoration as a DOS program. File saving is done through Windows with a simple menu. Do your back-ups once a month when things run OK. This program is shareware but you get something like 25-30 backups free per set-up (no time limit). If you back-up your system once a month it should last you 1-2 yrs free.
Now, for WinME ERS will have a pop-up window asking you if you want to make it the default WinME restore program- Say NO- that way you can also use WinME own restore registry program.
ERS site:http://www.mslm.com
program found
6)There are many versions of Norton products and they have some incompatibilities with other programs and unresolved issues. To me it is still the best utility program. I would turn some features off so that is not constantly running and checking the system.
7)There are some issues if you try to defragment your drive when you have multiple OS'es and have one of the multi booting program that will lock you from doing this. I have not read enough on this to help you but be aware of it.
8)Everytime you install an OS save a copy of the boot.ini file in a folder called by that WinOS.It may help you see the logic of how this file changes as you instal different OS'es and your multiboot program.
9)Expect to run into several problems under 7 OS. Somewhere down the line is not going to be easy.
10) If you create shortcuts for programs under every OS. As an example let's say you have a shortcut for MSWord under Wind98, if you have a similar shortcut under Win2000,where you installed MSWord in a different folder under the Win2000 partition, when you run Norton Utilities it will try to delete one of these shortcuts.Why? because your booting drive will become "C" and one of the shortcuts won't be pointing to the right place. I imagine the workaround for this is to have only one copy of each program:
Example:
Partition 1: Win98 has MSWord installed
Partition 2: WinME boot WinME and install MSWord on the same folder on partition 1. This will tell the WinME registry that MSWord lies in partition 1 and every shortcut that you make of MSWord will point to partition 1
Partition 3:Win2000 boot Win2000 and install MSWord on the same folder as in partition 1.
etc for the other OS. As you see you may have to go over the same program installation over again for each operating OS. The advantage to this is 1) you will only have one MSWord program since it will be written over each time you over-install. 2) The shortcuts for this program will always be pointing to the same folder. 3) you save disk space. I personnally have not set-up this way but have a MSWord copy on each operating system and its causing me problems with the shortcuts, so I recommend what I said above.
As you see it is not an easy thing to keep and maintain multiple OS. It is best not to have more than 2 or 3 because of the upkeep.
I would anly do what you are attempting if:
1) learning experience where I have a second computer that would not impact on me if it went down.
2) need to test software and hardware compatibilities across multiple OS's for business analysis.
3) I am unsure which OS is best for me.
If you only have one computer keep a clean drive with Win98 so you have something to fall back on, in worst case scenarios.
Good luck! Please keep us abreast of your experience there are plenty of newbies that can learn from your experience, just as I tell you about my.
PS: Partition Magic 6 is compatible with Win98,ME,2000,NT I believe prior versions not or limited.
