MichaelWeaser wrote:

I am having problems with bootmagic 8 to getting it to boot dos from a 2nd primary partition. I have been messing with bootmagic 8 to try to get 2 different DOS versions to boot on different partitions. I have ms-dos 6.22 on the 1st primary partition and than ms-dos 5 on the 2nd primary partition. it is set up in the bootmagic boot menu to boot from either , but when I select the ms-dos 5 partition I get the "Non-System Disk or disk error" message. Also about 2 weeks ago I have gotten it to work perfectly to boot ms-dos 5 from the 2nd partition using bootmagic, The only difference is I used bootmagic 7 and not 8, which should not make a difference. I am just baffled that I can't get it work again.

I don't know if this is the case, but all boot partitions of any MS DOS (up to and including 6.x) should be in the first 8GB of a given HDD, if I remember correctly. The second requirement is, if you boot DOS from a non first primary, then the preceeding primaries should be setup as hidden (if not already unreadable to DOS, like FAT32 or NTFS partitions). Your boot manager should be doing it automatically I guess, if set up accordingly.

Check Master Booter documentation, it is very helpful about that kind of information.

http://www.masterbooter.com/main/news.php?lang=en

tayyare wrote:

I don't know if this is the case, but all boot partitions of any MS DOS (up to and including 6.x) should be in the first 8GB of a given HDD, if I remember correctly. The second requirement is, if you boot DOS from a non first primary, then the preceeding primaries should be setup as hidden (if not already unreadable to DOS, like FAT32 or NTFS partitions). Your boot manager should be doing it automatically I guess, if set up accordingly.

Check Master Booter documentation, it is very helpful about that kind of information.

http://www.masterbooter.com/main/news.php?lang=en

yup , it is the first 8GB because its actually a 4GB hard drive that is split into 2 2GB primary partitions, and bootmagic is doing what you are saying, making partitions hidden. I am still working on how the hell did I get it work once, and now trying again it won't do squat.

Never worked with bootmagic but i will tell you in a abstract way what i do on BootIt NG.
The bootit ng allow me to edit the mbr for all hds for each boot entry on the menu,and have more than 4 primary partitions on a single drive.
So assuming that you are working on a single drive, and you mentioned that both partitions are on the beginning of the drive.
I create 3 "null" partitions(8mb, beos formatted since msdos/windows dont have a clue what it is about) and i edit the mbr on each boot entry fitting the first entry on the mbr to the dos partition.
So in the end i have two boot entries: MS-DOS 1(mbr: fat partition 1, null, null, null) and MS-DOS 2(mbr: fat partition 2, null, null, null).
Not sure if the boot manager/ partition manager that you are using has support to do it.

.legaCy wrote:

Never worked with bootmagic but i will tell you in a abstract way what i do on BootIt NG. The bootit ng allow me to edit the mbr […]
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Never worked with bootmagic but i will tell you in a abstract way what i do on BootIt NG.
The bootit ng allow me to edit the mbr for all hds for each boot entry on the menu,and have more than 4 primary partitions on a single drive.
So assuming that you are working on a single drive, and you mentioned that both partitions are on the beginning of the drive.
I create 3 "null" partitions(8mb, beos formatted since msdos/windows dont have a clue what it is about) and i edit the mbr on each boot entry fitting the first entry on the mbr to the dos partition.
So in the end i have two boot entries: MS-DOS 1(mbr: fat partition 1, null, null, null) and MS-DOS 2(mbr: fat partition 2, null, null, null).
Not sure if the boot manager/ partition manager that you are using has support to do it.

I tried to use the boot manager that you use Bootit NG and it actually works properly and correctly. I have no idea how I got bootmagic to work properly once and I can't replicate it and get it to work properly again. I might as switch to Bootit NG, I am also going to switch back to bootmagic 7, to see if 8 is the problem