Two of my previous attempts to multi-boot Windows XP, ME, 2000 and Redhat linux 7.3 have all failed. My friend has his set up and he uses System Commander to boot into the different OSes. He uses XP, ME, NT, 2000 & Mandrake. I have a 20gig Western Digital and a 80gig Maxtor. I plan to use the 20gig solely for purposes of operating system files. I use the 80gig to store my mp3's, movies, videos, documents, downloads, etc.... The 80gig has 38gigs of free space and i don't want to use that for installing any OS, just my files. I would appreciate it if anyone would suggest the best way to partition my 20gig to multiboot Me, 2000, XP and Redhat. Basically my idea is to have the XP partition to be the largest, cuz i will be working in there mostly. I can figure out the sizes by my self. What i need to know is how to set them eg. Which should be primary and which should be logical. What type of file systems. I really need this multiboot to work.

linux can be a pain to get the partitions to work with windows partitions. if you put a windows extended partition on the drive you might have problems unless you leave part of it unformated. what I do is with system commander make two primary partitions for windows. then install linux then use system commander and see how the partitions look. thegorx

oh yeah leave free space for linux and do partitioning of it with it's install

yea i have linux covered. I actually like it just as windows. I know what it needs to installed etc. But i don't want to use it's built in bootloaders (lilo and grub) instead i would rather just use System Commander. Could i keep the first 5 gigs on the 20gig HD to install linux. So i just leave the first 5 unformatted. and then format the next 5 or so. so that it becomes the C: Drive to the Windows installation. Will that work. I have tried putting 4gigs on the first partition of the hard drive. and then 5gigs for the next which i installed linux on. and so on.

yes, you should be able to do that you might have to use the system commander disk2 I believe to partition it without it installed. it will ask you where you want the partitions in this case at the end of the drive. or use fdisk then make dos primary of the size of partition you want for windows ME then install system commander in DOS. you might want to also have Windows 98 DOS as a Commander select since you have windows ME. So if you install DOS first then that should give you a DOS option. Because Windows ME DOS like in it's boot disk is too limited. Then move the partition down 5 gigs. as for linux don't even partition the first 5 gigs. In system commander you can do that. an it would be best I think not to use extended partitions or logical drives. because one of the linux partitions is like an extended partition And wouldn't let you have two extended on one drive. I think the drive should be able to handle to primary partions for windows and linux with all its partitions. so -------- primary ------- primary ------- 5gigs of nothing for linux partitions no partition no format nothing oh yea, turn off surface scan if you know your drive is ok. it take way too long if you want to check the drive use utilites at the drives website.

system commander should take over when ever its installed. but you other boot loader are still there.

if the boot loader gets messed up use the Checkmbr on the root drive of where it was installed to. to fix the master boot record