Mixing 8+3 and LFN is a very bad idea.

dr_st wrote on 2020-04-28, 07:39:

Does Win9x see multiple primary partitions? I think DOS does not.

Yes, DOS and Windows recognize multiple primary partitions.

Ok, so far, MagicPartition 7 has been my friend! This is how I do it:

1. Install Win95

2. Install Participation 7

3. Create new partition

4. In PartitionMagic 7 set this new partition as Active (this hides Win95, and makes the new a fresh, blank one, ready for installation of the next OS)

5. Install Win98

6. Install BootMagic 7, and add Win98 to its boot menu selection

7. Boot back to Win98, DISABLE BootMagic 7
(this makes the system go back to Win95)

8. Create another partition

9. In PartitionMagic 7 set this new partition as Active (this hides Win95, and makes the new a fresh, blank one, ready for installation of the next OS)

10. Install WinME

11. Install BootMagic 7, Enable menu, add WinME to menu selection

12. Boot back to Win98, DISABLE BootMagic 7
(this makes the system go back to Win95)

When I try to install NT, PartitionMagic 7 gives me a message that NT's partition would be beyond 4GB, and it might not work, I ignored. and low and behold, during its DOS operation, the PartitionMagic 7 gives me an error message, and now my Win95 is corrupted.

I am going to try the other method that you guys mentioned.

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-04-29, 03:09:

When I try to install NT, PartitionMagic 7 gives me a message that NT's partition would be beyond 4GB, and it might not work, I ignored. and low and behold, during its DOS operation, the PartitionMagic 7 gives me an error message, and now my Win95 is corrupted.

Not sure what exactly that error message may be, but a bit of Googling does indeed suggest that you might run into problems if you're trying to place your Win2K partition somewhere past the first 8.4 GB of your hard drive.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-esse … d-file-systems/

That seems to be the *exact* cause of the issue. I believe I have to shrink/resize my existing Win95, Win98SE, and WinME partitions. If I resize everything under 8 GB, I should be OK, I hope?

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-04-29, 03:09:

I am going to try the other method that you guys mentioned.

it is possible to have win 95,98 2k on one hard drive and one system

keep trying and i am sure you will get there

Hey guys,
Update, so I have been able to use System Commander 5000 (and PartitionMagic 7) to create up to 4 partitions (primary) to install:

- One FAT partition for my boot manager software (either System Commander 5000, or PartitionMagic 7)
- Another FAT partition for MS-DOS 6.22
- 3rd partition for Windows 3.1 (which I installed on top of the MS-DOS 6.22)
- 4th partition is my Win95 OSR 2.5

Now, both System Commander 5000, and PartitionMagic 7, can not create a 5th primary partition (I know a disk system limitation), but they don't even allow me to create an extended partition in the unused part of the hard drive.

Questions:
1) Is 4 the maximum number of OS' that I can have on a given hard drive?

2) Is there anyway to create additional partitions (I know the NT, and Win2K allows for booting from extended, but some of their files need to resided in a primary partition)

3) Initially my goal was to install only Win95 and Win98SE (or Win98SE and Win2K), but I got greedy and now I want to have:

MS-DOS 6.22
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 OSR 2.5
Windows 98SE
Windows ME
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000 Pro

Is this farfetched?

Everything you do here is far-fetched and pointless. There is no practical need to any of this. For actually using a computer of that era, the only two operating systems you need are Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000. This setup can be achieved with no boot managers.

If the goal is to have a museum piece that showcases every operating system there is, it's usually easier to achieve with swappable CompactFlash cards.

But as long as we are continuing this exercise in futility, then why would you have separate partitions for DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1? Windows 3.1 is just an application for DOS. It doesn't put any boot files anywhere.

IIRC, if you want more than 4 partitions, you've got to replace a primary partition with an extended one.

It's been ages since I had to do that however. Thank God for GPT layout.

dr_st wrote on 2020-05-02, 07:41:

Everything you do here is far-fetched and pointless.

Talk about harsh! 😀

dr_st wrote on 2020-05-02, 07:41:

If the goal is to have a museum piece that showcases every operating system there is, it's usually easier to achieve with swappable CompactFlash cards.

Well, (in my case at least) it is a lot of work: I have to physically open the computer case, remove the CF, insert other CF. I just wanted to have them all on one drive, and use a menu to choose the desired OS!

dr_st wrote on 2020-05-02, 07:41:

this exercise in futility.

Well this "exercise futility", has taught me a lot! Isn't the purpose of these forums to teach and support? 😀

dr_st wrote on 2020-05-02, 07:41:

then why would you have separate partitions for DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1? Windows 3.1 is just an application for DOS. It doesn't put any boot files anywhere.

I decided that it was excessive, so I narrowed it down to 1 partition for (MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.1, and SC5000 boot manager), plus three more partitions for Win95, Win98, and Win2K Pro!

😀 But thank you, I wholeheartedly appreciate every singe response! 😀

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-05-02, 09:17:

Well, (in my case at least) it is a lot of work: I have to physically open the computer case, remove the CF, insert other CF. I just wanted to have them all on one drive, and use a menu to choose the desired OS!

Right, I understand that, but as you saw yourself it becomes non-trivial to set up and manage. I agree that for a swappable adapter be a good idea, it needs to be external, so you could swap the cards easily.

There is also always the option to have multiple hard drives. At least two should be possible (IDE Primary and Secondary Master). You could have up to 4 if you use the Slave slots on every IDE connector, but then you may run into performance issues as two hard drives share the same cable.

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-05-02, 09:17:

Well this "exercise futility", has taught me a lot! Isn't the purpose of these forums to teach and support?

You are right, of course, but I, at least, always try to remain slightly practical, and draw a line between things that are useful for providing a certain experience (such as better performance or extended compatibility), versus things that are practically pointless, and have value as research only. Absolutely not saying that research-only things should not be done - to the contrary! Just saying one should be aware which is which.

That is why, for example, that every time a newbie opens yet another thread as to "I want to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 98; how do I do that and which boot manager is better", my first reaction would not to be to list the 75 different ways to achieve that (as some would do), but to ask "Why? What is the goal?". There is a good chance the person thinks it is actually needed to properly play and enjoy both DOS and Windows games, which is not true.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-05-02, 07:45:

IIRC, if you want more than 4 partitions, you've got to replace a primary partition with an extended one.

Indeed. You can have four primary partitions, but if you want more partitions, then you will have to replace one of them with an extended partition. You can only have one extended partition, but you can create many logical partitions inside that empty partition. (I don't know what the limit is.) The extended partition itself is only useful as a container for the logical partitions.

As previously emphasized, only Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 should be able to boot from a logical partition – and it would seem that logical partition has to be within the first 8.4 GB of the drive.

Or you could just get a second hard drive and avoid a decent portion of this mess considering you will probably not make any use of it once you finally get it set up.

I agree this is totally pointless but it is an interesting challenge.
it's doable just keep your OS partitions small and install programs, games, etc to a extended partition

Something like below keeps you under.
MS-DOS 6.22/ 3.x ~500mb
Windows 95 OSR 2.5 ~500mb
Windows 98SE ~ 1GB
Windows ME ~1GB
Windows NT 4.0 ~1GB
Windows 2000 Pro ~3gb

If you used the inbuilt boot MS boot manager to "share" the primary partition say use System commander to select Win95 and have that then prompt between Win95 and NT4 then NT's boot files are still below the 8GB limit and rest of the OS can live on a extended partition above 8GB. Catch is NT4 will need to be SP4 or a install disk need creating.
https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/197/Q197667/

Back in the day I used to tackle these kind of "requirements" with LiLo and I still do it that way today.

Lilo provides rewriting and change rules. Using those you can change drives 0x80, 0x81 and/or partitions to your needs, activating and deactivating on the fly. Rewriting partitions to type 99 the older OSses can't "see" those partitions. Of course MBR restrictions remain but that way they can be "extended"...

Today I usually use it for DOS, 98SE and XP multi boot systems.

I long ago gave up on having multiple OSes on a single drive. Yes it can be done and it works, but if anything ever breaks/corrupts, it can be a major pain to repair . To this day, I much prefer setting up one OS per drive and using the BIOS' boot selector to choose the one I want (admittedly, older BIOSes do not offer that option). I am not a fan of Grub2's complexity either, if anyone is curious .

That being said, if multiple OSes on a drive is what you want to experiment with, why not . My recommendation is to backup to whole drive when done (and keep that backup current) and to also keep a backup of the MBR and superblock , just in case .

EDIT :And do not use the FDISK /MBR command if the bootloader of your choice uses a custom MBR . Oh, and a bootsector virus can really ruin your day with such a setup (if you don't have backups),

darry wrote on 2020-05-12, 13:26:

To this day, I much prefer setting up one OS per drive and using the BIOS' boot selector to choose the one I want (admittedly, older BIOSes do not offer that option).

I'm a fan of this approach as well, however, I recently discovered something odd. On my retro rig, hdd1 has Win98SE while hdd2 has DOS 6.22+Win3.1. At one point, Win98 broke because I was messing around with a bunch of different drivers, so I decided to reinstall it. I booted the system from the startup floppy disk and reinstalled Win98 on hdd1 as usual.

However, after the reinstall was complete, I noticed that hdd2 containing DOS+Win3.1 was no longer bootable. I checked and all the files were still there, but it seems like Win98 removed some flags from the boot sector of hdd2 during its installation which messed up the bootup process. This puzzled me because Win98 was installed on hdd1 and it wasn't supposed to touch hdd2 at all.

Just posting this as a warning to anyone who might end up in a similar situation. When reinstalling the system on one of the disks, you might want to physically disconnect the other disk until the process is finished.

darry wrote on 2020-05-12, 13:26:

EDIT :And do not use the FDISK /MBR command if the bootloader of your choice uses a custom MBR . Oh, and a bootsector virus can really ruin your day with such a setup (if you don't have backups),

That statement is true for any kind of setup, even with single boot systems. Although issuing a command like fdisk /mbr isn't that much easier than /sbin/lilo from a boot disk or live CD (of course you've got to have a copy of your lilo.conf).

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-12, 14:31:

darry wrote on 2020-05-12, 13:26:

EDIT :And do not use the FDISK /MBR command if the bootloader of your choice uses a custom MBR . Oh, and a bootsector virus can really ruin your day with such a setup (if you don't have backups),

That statement is true for any kind of setup, even with single boot systems. Although issuing a command like fdisk /mbr isn't that much easier than /sbin/lilo from a boot disk or live CD (of course you've got to have a copy of your lilo.conf).

What I meant was that single drive singleboot systems running vanilla DOS/Windows 9x can have bootsector issues easily fixed with FDISK /MBR without a need for a bootsector backup or a config file , whereas on a single drive multiboot setup with custom MBR , not only does FDISK /MBR not fix anything but can conceivably make thinks worse (though admittedly not by much if things are already in a non booting state) . Also, running FDISK /MBR by accident on a multiboot working system is decidedly unlikely, but it can happen .