Multiboot question

[Gunner]

Just bought a 1TB SATA drive over the weekend and the data and power cables came today, so I am ready to install the drive.... (one of my PATA drives is about 10 years old and access is getting slower, so want to get rid of it before it bombs out)  Question is, can I multiboot Win7?  I want to install all of my windows - 95, 98, 2K and XP, I know with 2K and XP I was able to do it by installing in certain order...  It should be possible with Win 7 right?  what order should I install?  I forgotten what I did the last time I did it...

[Gunner]

Eh, gonna begin my journey... be back tomorrow (fingers crossed)

[sinsi]

The usual thing is to install them oldest to newest, but 95/98 and possibly 2000 might not work with the SATA controller (I have an Intel controller which limits me to XP or better). Not sure if you can set a legacy PATA mode in the BIOS but then you miss all the benefits of SATA.

[frktons]

Just bought a 1TB SATA drive over the weekend and the data and power cables came today, so I am ready to install the drive.... (one of my PATA drives is about 10 years old and access is getting slower, so want to get rid of it before it bombs out)  Question is, can I multiboot Win7?  I want to install all of my windows - 95, 98, 2K and XP, I know with 2K and XP I was able to do it by installing in certain order...  It should be possible with Win 7 right?  what order should I install?  I forgotten what I did the last time I did it...

You are preparing a nightmare for yourself, do you know it?
Hoping for the best, fingers crossed.  :P

[GregL]

Maybe consider using 'XP Mode' and/or Virtual PC for the older OSes.

[Gunner]

not sure what i am gonna do just got win7 installed..... installing all the updates and drivers now.... had to play with some bios settings to get the sata drive to work ... either gonna use a boot manager or a virtual pc....  glad i have internet on my cell :-)

[japheth]

The usual thing is to install them oldest to newest, but 95/98 and possibly 2000 might not work with the SATA controller (I have an Intel controller which limits me to XP or better). Not sure if you can set a legacy PATA mode in the BIOS but then you miss all the benefits of SATA.

I also have an INTEL SATA IDE controller which is unknown to Win9x, but my multi-boot works fine with XP, 9x, DOS and Linux, with BIOS in "enhanced" mode. The trick is to disable the Win9x low-level esdi_506.pdr driver. Win9x will then use the BIOS.

[Vortex]

Hi Gunner,

You can try Grub4DOS. It's a very powerful boot manager.

[frktons]

Hi Gunner,

You can try Grub4DOS. It's a very powerful boot manager.

And procured me some bad days as well.  :green2

According to my experience if you can manage to have the bootloader in a usb pen or floppy disk,
it can save you from lots of future headaches. But is is just my experience, others could have used
GRUB to manage Win 7 without problems.

[Vortex]

Hi frktons,

I have XP, NativeEx XP and Windows 7 PE on the same hard disc partition managed by Grub4DOS and I don't have any problem. In Windows 7, you need to rename bootmgr and again rename grldr to bootmgr. Once the partition boot sector loads the renamed grldr, you can configure menu.lst to load the operating systems on your hard disc. You can check Diddy's Grub4dos Guide to see the examples :

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

[frktons]

Hi frktons,

I have XP, NativeEx XP and Windows 7 PE on the same hard disc partition managed by Grub4DOS and I don't have any problem. In Windows 7, you need to rename bootmgr and again rename grldr to bootmgr. Once the partition boot sector loads the renamed grldr, you can configure menu.lst to load the operating systems on your hard disc. You can check Diddy's Grub4dos Guide to see the examples :

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Thanks Vortex. Good to know.  :U

[Magnum]

Just bought a 1TB SATA drive over the weekend and the data and power cables came today, so I am ready to install the drive.... (one of my PATA drives is about 10 years old and access is getting slower, so want to get rid of it before it bombs out)  Question is, can I multiboot Win7?  I want to install all of my windows - 95, 98, 2K and XP, I know with 2K and XP I was able to do it by installing in certain order...  It should be possible with Win 7 right?  what order should I install?  I forgotten what I did the last time I did it...

You are preparing a nightmare for yourself, do you know it?
Hoping for the best, fingers crossed.  :P

Even backing up everything to a second drive, I don't think I would do that.

I would be afraid that after doing it, I would later say, "What was I thinking?"
But then, it will be one of those "learning experiences".

[Gunner]

Well, windows definitely loads up much quicker with the newer drive (And some people say SATA isn't faster hmmph)  Should of partitioned in the beginning, now I am stuck with a 400+ gig partition for Win7!  Eh, got a few 200+ gig partitions so I am happy... plenty of room for my code and porn  hehehehehe  Thanks for all the tips!  I will stick with this for now, I remember the headaches I had when I set up all those OS's don't need em now....  I will look into getting a thumb drive or something....

[sinsi]

Win7 will let you shrink partitions from Disk Management, after a fresh install would be the best time.
Get the VMWare Player, it's free, then install all the old OS's - I have all the old Windows OS's and DOS (even OS/2  :bg)
Don't install an old Windows now or you will find it hard to boot win7. Old Windows used boot.ini, vista/7 use boot manager.

[Gunner]

Win7 will let you shrink partitions from Disk Management, after a fresh install would be the best time.

Actually, that is what I used, and it would only let me shrink down to 469 gigs... used it right after a fresh install....  Don't get it?!?!  Started installing my programs again and still have 453 gigs left.... eh, doesn't really bother me..... just not how I wanted to partition.

Thanks, I will keep VMWare in mind!