dual booting NTFS and FAT32 OSes

[karl_axe]

most of dual booting manuals i've read says NTFS and FAT OSes can't be combined - to dual boot, both have to be FAT32.

almost all manuals i've read places winXP(most popular NT OS) on the first partition and thereby prohibiting the use of the secure NT file system.

however, programmers like me need complete access to DOS and hardware ports which XP restricts access to (in my experience). so an OS like win98 or winME is important as it is running on FAT and is not that strict of hardware access and has full support for DOS.

i experimented and came up with the setup:

1. create separate partitions for NTFS and FAT OSes

2. install FAT OS (98 or Me) on the first partition where the boot
record is placed

3. install NTFS OS on the second partition. format that partition
into NTFS. this will overwrite the boot sector and replace it
but it will allow booting FAT and NTFS OSes in the same PC.

it worked perfectly for me. and it should for anyone else. send me
a message if it fails on your installation.

MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA BEFORE PLAYING WITH YOUR PARTITION TABLE!

 

[GoNz0]

i never came across that problem duel booting, just always worked for me fat32/ntfs

 

[daTerminehtor]

Don't know what manuals you have been reading, but, they are wrong (as you know now). Completely so. Install works like so, latest OS goes on last. File system matters not, unless, you are installing DOS, which needs to be installed somewhere within the first gig of the HD.

So, 9x first on FAT32, and XP Pro, Home, 2000, NT, Media Edition (though, I don't know why), Server, Advanced Server... you get the idea.

I have a dual boot setup (check specs under sig) and have absolutley no problem with 98se on first partition, and XP Pro on 4th (yes, 4th) partition.

17 partitions over 3 HD's (1 external firedrive) at 320 GB's total.

 

[j79zlr]

the only thing you have to worry about is that the root C:\ drive is FAT32 or else win9x will not be able to read the boot sector. The boot sector will always be placed on the primary hard drives first partition.

 

[karl_axe]

thanks guys

i guess i was reading the wrong pages.

anyways, does any of you know if it is possible to triple-boot win98SE, winXP pro, and RedHat Linux 9?

thanks a lot and more power!

 

[parj]

Yes it is possible to do that. It's been a while since I used Linux so I may get the following command wrong.You type "lilo -s boot.dat" or "lilo -S boot.dat" in Linux, the coomand writes the bootsector of linux into boot.dat

Copy "boot.dat" into the main booting partition. Open boot.ini in Windows XP and type at the end of operating systems column "Linux = C:\boot.dat". (Assuming you copied that file to C). When XP boots up, there should be a choice stating "Linux". Choose that and *bingo* Linux appears.

Another way would be to use Grub, a booting program of Linux, that supports the booting of various operating systems.

Or the worst way, have Linux boot from a floppy disk, the option of which you can choose during the installation of Linux.

Note: In case you recompile your boot script in linux, you have to write a new boot.dat file. I have performed this operation on WIndows2000 several times with no problem. When I got Windows XP, I had neither the time or the HDD space to work with Linux.

 

[karl_axe]

thanks a lot man!

i'll try that ASAP