I have a question! I have MS-DOS (with windows 3.1 going to be installed as well), Windows 98, and Windows 2000 Profesional already installed (can be recovered from a bootable cd set of five disks [it is four gigs of data]) and I want to have them dual boot on my computer's 45 gig hard drive without problems (I also have a 40 gig drive but I don't want to erase the data on it because it is completely full). I know there is a limit to how many primary partitions on a drive (four are only allowed), and I am going to put all the different operating systems on primary partitions (MS-DOS 2 gig fat16 partition, followed by a logical partition set with three 2 gig fat16 partitions[for dos storage and a share drive], then a 10 gig fat32 drive with Winows 98 installed, and at the end of the drive a Windows 2000 Profesional NTFS partition made of whats left of the space), now I was wondering if I could do all of this and use Windows 2000's boot menu to boot between the systems. Would I need to install all of the systems and then install Windows 2000 Prof. last and recover from the CD set (it can copy the files to the partition without destroying any other data [I've done it before])? I built the system myself and the CD set was made with "NTI Backup Now!". I have PowerQuest Partition Magic 6.0 Professional as well (with boot disks for dos operation from a floppy). Please help I have not done this yet but I wish to know if it would work, I am going to order the partitions as I have ordered them above. Will the Windows 2000 Boot menu be able to boot the primary partitions? If you have the answers to my questions, please write the question and then anwser them so I know ezxactly which you are answering. Thank You!!

oops! I spelled exactly wrong! Sorry about that! The origional was "ezxactly" it was a typo!

Thats a lot to digest............Windows 3.1 now your really asking for problems. Dual booting works........or even using a program like System Commander. I dual boot myself.......it does make thinks like backups etc more complicated. The short answer is yes you can do what your describing. If you going to put each OS on its own Primary partition. Your going to have to hide all but the Primaary partition your booting to. Which complicates things. I think you would be better off using System Commander or BootMagic. Thus running the different OS's on logical drives....with all the boot information on just one Primary partition. Personally I wouldnt run Windows 3.1 along side newer operating systems. System Commander in my opinion is you best bet for a trouble free way of running more than Two OS's. You would normally install Windows 2000 last in the process......but its going freak out with Windows 3.1 installed. You could give it a try.........just make sure you dont have valuable data at risk. Hope that helps.

I've used Window 3.1 and it's not that bad, and I need it to play some of the older games because the newer Windows versions use more resources that the games need. And I've used boot Magic before I redid my system when I got Windows 2000, but I didn't like it because it kept killing my second drive so I couldn't use it with partition magic. Partition magic was also a nice little toy because it automaticaly hid the other partitions from each other. I tried to set my computer up to boot the different operating systems on logical partitions like you said but that didn't really work well. All of my important data is on the second drive so I don't need to worry about that. And thank you I just wanted to make sure that this would all work right, but I have one more question, Do I need to use the Diskprobe utility on the Windows 2000 CD? Will it still overwrite the Master Boot Record? And if so how exactly do I do it? (oh and I'm going to install Windows 3.1 last if that's going to make it work better)

Have a read of the following M$ KB's; Win3x will go in alongside DOS - obviously as it's DOS (not DOS7x) based. The M$ version for W2K etc. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.ASP The M$ version for XP etc. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q306559 From the first link (the W2K version) I think you can see it's quite possible. The order of isntallatin is important; also the order of file formats on the drive: fat16, then fat32, then ntfs. Your suggested drive config. allows for the boot-code limit of 8Gig for '98; '98 must start within the first 8Gig physically of the drive (you will have '98 starting at 6Gig.). Using an add-in boot util is the other way to go. It has its advantages (and some might suggest disadvantages/irritations). I think I'm right in that PM (and possibly System Commander) will allow more than 4 Primaries? But I'd keep things simple and have a few primaries as I need.

no the bios of the mother board will not allow more than four primary partitions, if by some reason you acually get more than four on the hard drive, it would be damaged beyond repair and there would be no possible way to restore or delete the partitions. But besides that should I just put all of the partitions on logical partitions besides the MS-DOS one or what?

I'd use a single Primary (for boot/startup files) and put all OS, data etc. into logical-drives. But then I prefer not to use add-in boot-utils (unless absolutely necessary). Suggest you follow the M$ model I posted above; it works? This way you don't need an add-in boot-util? If you use PM or System Commander - follow their guidelines in the manual? Main thing to remember - KISS (Keep It Simple S.....)