First post, by bf_bullpup
Hello everyone. I heard great things about the boot manager Plop in these forums. I am posting here because I'm not sure if this is a Plop issue or an issue with the operating systems.
I am attempting to triple boot these OSes in one hard drive in a Dell Optiplex GX150: Windows XP SP3, Windows 98 SE, and MS-DOS 6.22. I am using Plop as a boot manager. XP boots just fine. 98 and DOS do not. DOS tells me "Non-System disk or disk error." 98 just gives me a blank screen with a single blinking cursor.
The steps I took after starting with a formatted hard drive:
1) Install XP first
2) Use Image for Windows 2.75 in Hiren's BootCD 15.2 to back up my XP
3) Erase the disk and install MS-DOS
4) Image for Windows to back up MS-DOS
5) Erase the disk and install Windows 98 SE
6) Image for Windows to back up Windows 98 SE
7) Using Partition Wizard Home Edition 7.0 from Hiren's CD, create four primary partitions. First, C:, for XP. Second, E:, for 98. Third, F:, for DOS. Fourth, G:, as a shared drive for XP and 98 (XP was installed using FAT32, not NTFS). Only the DOS partition is FAT16.
8 ) Install XP to C: I actually wanted to restore the disk image from Image for Windows but it was corrupted, so I said screw it, I can just install it again and verify the backup next time. I did go ahead and use Disk Management in XP to verify and slightly edit the partitions as I wanted them.
9) Install Plop via its boot floppy. Set three boot settings for XP, 98, and DOS.
10) Restore the disk images for 98 and DOS to their respective partitions.
11) Attempt to use Plop to start up all three profiles one at a time. This is where I got stuck.
I'm posting here because (a) I am not sure if it is a Plop issue or a partition/OS issue and (b) I learned about Plop from some threads here in Vogons, so I figured some of may know if I have missed a step. Should I attempt a method different than what I outlined above? I did try something else beforehand. I tried to use Plop and Partition Wizard to hide volumes, but DOS didn't play well and overwrote my C: drive that had XP in it when DOS was installed. At this point I'm tempted to just install MS-DOS to an USB since I want it just for games and I can just have XP or 98 transfer games into the USB for DOS. Would that be a better idea? I would still like to at least be able to dual boot XP and 98, though.
I did use the tutorial, particularly clear/don't touch, but it didn't help me.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/examples.html
Side question: why don't I see a starry field when Plop starts up? I am seeing a full screen grid field instead even though I selected Yes for stars. Is it because I am using the floppy version or because it is version 5.0.15?