XFDISK works best for me. Here is my Partition map:

2GB P FAT16 Boot-Dos
2GB L FAT16 Dosdata1
2GB L FAT16 Dosdata2
2GB L FAT16 Setup (xfdisk/Tools/Drivers/Win1-3x/Win9x etc.)
XGB P FAT32 Boot Win9x
XGB P NTFS Boot Win2K

For later machines with less Dos-Compatibility I Change to:

2GB P FAT16 Boot-Dos
xGB P Fat32 Boot Win9x
xGB P NTFS Boot Win2K
xGB L FAT32 Windata (Games/Setup/Drivers/Media etc.)

The XFDISK-Bootmanager does not require an extra Partition and it can easly be deactivated by itself,
therefore I put it in the last logical drive within the first 8GB of the harddisk so that it is accessible
from every OS.

I reccomend using the "autohide" Option in the xfdisk.ini

I swear by PLOP Boot Manager

Masterbooter is what I use. Shareware version can support up to 3 operating systems so for your purpose it's practically free (registered version has support for eight)

I really like it's simplicity and informative documentation. It even comes as a bootable FDD image if being required and its own partitioning software.

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

Thanks guys I will give them each a go and keep them all for future use and I have heard of EasyBCD or Easy BCD is that one any good too?

Throwing System Commander 7 out there. Works perfectly.

Im trying Masterbooter first and I have a 10GB HDD and I need some help with this, first I ran "efdisk /mbr" then efdisk again and deleted all partitions, for the first primary I made a BIGDOS using starting cylinder "0" ie zero and then I put in 2048m for 2GB. I then made the next primary partition as FAT32 LBA starting with cylinder "0" ie zero again with 6144m for 6GB but im not sure if starting at zero again is the right way should I have set it to 523 as the first primary has:

Disk........Part........FS Type.......Start.......End......Size/MB....Act
==========================================================
First........First.......BIGDOS............0.......522..........4102........

I will also be making an extended partition to make a logical partition of 2GB so that Dos will have 4GB of space

Is the verifying of the hdd when making the extended and logical partition meant to be at crawling speed just to do the first check when making the extended partition took about 25 minutes

When making the BIGDOS primary and it asks for ending cylinder or size in MB should I use 2048m or 2000m for 2GB?

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

Im trying Masterbooter first and I have a 10GB HDD and I need some help with this, first I ran "efdisk /mbr" then efdisk again a […]
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Im trying Masterbooter first and I have a 10GB HDD and I need some help with this, first I ran "efdisk /mbr" then efdisk again and deleted all partitions, for the first primary I made a BIGDOS using starting cylinder "0" ie zero and then I put in 2048m for 2GB. I then made the next primary partition as FAT32 LBA starting with cylinder "0" ie zero again with 6144m for 6GB but im not sure if starting at zero again is the right way should I have set it to 523 as the first primary has:

Disk........Part........FS Type.......Start.......End......Size/MB....Act
==========================================================
First........First.......BIGDOS............0.......522..........4102........

I will also be making an extended partition to make a logical partition of 2GB so that Dos will have 4GB of space

Is the verifying of the hdd when making the extended and logical partition meant to be at crawling speed just to do the first check when making the extended partition took about 25 minutes

When making the BIGDOS primary and it asks for ending cylinder or size in MB should I use 2048m or 2000m for 2GB?

First of all, you cannot start each partition in the same disk from cyl. zero. It must be something like this : 1. partition 0 - 210, 2. parititon: 211 - 520, 3.partition 521 - 648, etc.

Efdisk is not intelligent. It tries to do whatever you tell it to do, so you need to tell it the correct things. And I absolutely suggest you to read the documentation.

I don't suggest using extended partitions and logical drives. Efdisk is fully capable of creating upto 4 primary partitions in a single drive, so why not use it?. I suggest you to create 3 primary partitions: 2GB (DOS boot), 6GB (W9x boot) and 2GB (DOS data).

I usually put 2000m to be on the safe side. 2GB is already and completely huge for a DOS drive, 30-40 MB more or less is not important in my opinion

Thanks tayyare for the cylinder setup and everyone else for the recommendations I got sidetracked and while not proceeding with Masterbooter I tried XFDisk and this program is very easy to use so I like this very much and the boot manager is nice and simple with its retro blue boot screen complete with white line borders its something out of Dos like a file manager, when I mastered XFDisk I tried PLOP boot manager and im sticking with this one because of its ease of use for the whole menu and that it can hide partitions from other OS's and you cant see a better star warp unless its from Windows 98 or 95 screen saver. I'll go back to Masterbooter later and have another go at it but from the manual it says the free version can only create primary partitions and not extended or logical though it seems to make them anyway.

Tayyare why should I make two primary partitions for Dos as the boot manager would have to step in to enable them to see eachother when instead I can just make the default primary with a logical?

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

Thanks tayyare for the cylinder setup and everyone else for the recommendations I got sidetracked and while not proceeding with Masterbooter I tried XFDisk and this program is very easy to use so I like this very much and the boot manager is nice and simple with its retro blue boot screen complete with white line borders its something out of Dos like a file manager, when I mastered XFDisk I tried PLOP boot manager and im sticking with this one because of its ease of use for the whole menu and that it can hide partitions from other OS's and you cant see a better star warp unless its from Windows 98 or 95 screen saver. I'll go back to Masterbooter later and have another go at it but from the manual it says the free version can only create primary partitions and not extended or logical though it seems to make them anyway.

Tayyare why should I make two primary partitions for Dos as the boot manager would have to step in to enable them to see eachother when instead I can just make the default primary with a logical?

I always considered primary partitions as more simpler and straight forward in multiboot systems. I never use logical drives in extended partitions. Extended partition is something forced by regular MS-DOS disk utilities like FDISK, and I really don't use FDISK anyways. You can call it personal preference.

Two dos partitions is actually not both for booting from. The second dos partition is a data only partition to store your extra dos files and also for exchanging data between dos and W9x. Remember, If you choose to hide bootable partitions from each other (you need to do this), when you boot W9x, you will not be seeing the DOS partition, and when you boot DOS, w9x fat32 partition is always invisible anyways. .

By the way, FDISK cannot create more than one primary partition, but DOS has no problem with upto 4 primaries on a single disk. DOS can see all those primaries without any help from any multiboot software (as long as they are FAT16 of course).

As a side note, Masterbooter has also a blue boot menu with white sidelines and it can of course hide bootable partitions from each other.