I think the general rule is that you hide all other primary partitions except the one you're booting from, rather than "hiding all other OSes". And to always keep at least one primary partition visible (and the extended partition doesn't count). It's more of a guideline than a rule, anyway.

For example in your proposed layout, even if you were to format the WIN2000 partition as FAT (*) , it would NEVER be seen as a C: drive when booting either of 311, 95, or 98, so there should be little to no conflict. And if you format as NTFS, then 311...98 are NOT going to see it anyway, hidden or not.

On the other direction, NT/Win2k forces you to have a visible primary partition so that it can install the bootloader there , so you are _always_ going to leave one of the first 3 visible when installing AND booting Win2k. NT can't boot from a logical partition: even if you can install it to one, the boot loader will be installed in the active/first primary partition anyway. So e.g. if you install NT with the win311 partition visible, it'll install a bootloader in WIN311 so that when you boot from WIN311 you'll get a menu saying "WinNT" or "MS-DOS".

(Some bootloaders can boot NT directly from a logical partition but they are the exception rather than the rule. I only know grub4dos.)

Basically, you don't really need to bother with hiding the Win2k partition.

FYI, the only way to create >4 primary partitions is the so called "pencil method" : you change the MBR on each boot so that your 4 primary partitions are the 4 ones you are interested in for that boot. There was some software which would automate it by remembering your actual partition layout somewhere else outside the MBR. I see no point going this way unless you know what you're doing.

javispedro1 wrote on 2024-08-13, 20:25:

I think the general rule is that you hide all other primary partitions except the one you're booting from, rather than "hiding a […]
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I think the general rule is that you hide all other primary partitions except the one you're booting from, rather than "hiding all other OSes". And to always keep at least one primary partition visible (and the extended partition doesn't count). It's more of a guideline than a rule, anyway.

For example in your proposed layout, even if you were to format the WIN2000 partition as FAT (*) , it would NEVER be seen as a C: drive when booting either of 311, 95, or 98, so there should be little to no conflict. And if you format as NTFS, then 311...98 are NOT going to see it anyway, hidden or not.

On the other direction, NT/Win2k forces you to have a visible primary partition so that it can install the bootloader there , so you are _always_ going to leave one of the first 3 visible when installing AND booting Win2k. NT can't boot from a logical partition: even if you can install it to one, the boot loader will be installed in the active/first primary partition anyway. So e.g. if you install NT with the win311 partition visible, it'll install a bootloader in WIN311 so that when you boot from WIN311 you'll get a menu saying "WinNT" or "MS-DOS".

(Some bootloaders can boot NT directly from a logical partition but they are the exception rather than the rule. I only know grub4dos.)

Basically, you don't really need to bother with hiding the Win2k partition.

FYI, the only way to create >4 primary partitions is the so called "pencil method" : you change the MBR on each boot so that your 4 primary partitions are the 4 ones you are interested in for that boot. There was some software which would automate it by remembering your actual partition layout somewhere else outside the MBR. I see no point going this way unless you know what you're doing.

I think that wouldn't work, because win2000 needs to have the other partitions hidden, to be their partition the C partition, if not, it will install on D, or E, or even F breaking some things.

I need to find a way to get more than 4 primary partitions, or at least to hide logical partitions

I see some videos of people with more than 4 OS on their boot menus.. so it must be possible

psaez wrote on 2024-08-13, 21:19:

I think that wouldn't work, because win2000 needs to have the other partitions hidden, to be their partition the C partition, if not, it will install on D, or E, or even F breaking some things.

What will break? You can install on D: just fine and nothing will break. If it annoys you cosmetically, you can use (post-installation) a drive letter remapping tool (PartitionMagic came with one) to change everything in the registry, etc. from D: to C:, then rearrange the actual drive letters as per your preference using disk management (NT >= 4 allows this). I have done this a million times... In fact, this is basically what happens on NT installs by default since Vista... (the install partition always becomes C:).

You require a visible primary partition to install NT's bootloader, or NT setup will refuse to continue.

psaez wrote on 2024-08-13, 21:19:

I need to find a way to get more than 4 primary partitions, or at least to hide logical partitions

Hiding the logical partition is definitely trivial, my guess is xfdisk doesn't offer this because it's almost always pointless (for the reasons I mentioned). In fact, why would it help with your current conundrum? Do you want to install something else afterwards?

But you cannot have more than 4 primary partitions, as this is a MBR limitation.

psaez wrote on 2024-08-13, 21:19:

I see some videos of people with more than 4 OS on their boot menus.. so it must be possible

It's mostly MS operating systems that have the requirement for a primary partition. Practically everything else (OS/2, Linux, etc.) is happy to install & boot from logical partitions.

Also notice NT requires one visible primary partition, but it doesn't require one such partition _for each OS_. This means you could install NT4, NT5, XP, Vista, etc. each on a logical partition, and the NT bootloader for all of them on the same primary partition.

There are a million other tricks that people play with to workaround these limitations.

You can try grub4dos, it is capable of booting a variety of operating systems without relying on their own bootsector - you can chainload ntldr or io.sys directly. And it also has a lot of ways to be launched - you can install the bootstrap code into MBR, PBR, it can masquerade itself as a Linux kernel, DOS device driver, DOS executable or you can run it from ntldr.

It is capable of (un)hiding partitions, it can load ramdisks (and boot from them) and it would not care if the operating system's kernel is installed on a logical partition.

You could use a combination of XFDISK and the OS's built in boot loader.

Win9x will allow you to boot into MS Dos, But I don't really like it so would do the following.

1. WIN311 (primary)
2. WIN95 (primary)
3. WIN98 (primary)
4. Extended Partition:
4a. WIN2000 (logical)
4b. DATA (logical)

unhide one of your Win9x partitions and install Win2k to your 4a partition.
setup will automatically create a boot menu asking if you want to boot into Windows 2000 or 9x

I'm currently experimenting with a stripped down W95B (no ie3) and 6.22 simultaneously on the same FAT16 partition.
W95 gives you the option to boot a "Previous MS-DOS version". It keeps separate config files for each OS.
You can select them from the boot menu. For W98B you need this patch. (also works with W95C and W98 allegedly): http://mpolibbs.steptail.com/software/WIN32/U … TES/W95BOOT.ZIP

So you can run DOS 6.22/WIN311 alongside 7.1/Win9x on the same partition.

Install Win2k on the second partition after remapping it.
Then configure GRUB4DOS to automate this and run when you boot.

You can create a separate FAT32 partition to store extra stuff.

It's a bit convoluted to keep multiple OSes on the same disk and requires patience to set it up. It's easier to buy a separate CompactFlash or SD card and be done with it, but I admit it's fun to set up such multi-boot system.

What are the specs for your build?

You will either need Win95 or Win98, there's really no need for both as they are essentially the same. Win95 is faster and leaner (especially if you stay away from IE) adequate for slower CPUs with less RAM. Win98 is heavier but more compatible with newer hardware and software (AGP video cards, USB devices, etc), best for PII+.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-08-14, 02:12:

You could use a combination of XFDISK and the OS's built in boot loader. […]
Show full quote

You could use a combination of XFDISK and the OS's built in boot loader.

Win9x will allow you to boot into MS Dos, But I don't really like it so would do the following.

1. WIN311 (primary)
2. WIN95 (primary)
3. WIN98 (primary)
4. Extended Partition:
4a. WIN2000 (logical)
4b. DATA (logical)

unhide one of your Win9x partitions and install Win2k to your 4a partition.
setup will automatically create a boot menu asking if you want to boot into Windows 2000 or 9x

If I do that... windows 2000 considers his drive D? or C?

I need that all the OS considers his drives C, because that, the solution was Hidding the other OS partitions.

psaez wrote on 2024-08-14, 07:20:

If I do that... windows 2000 considers his drive D? or C?

I need that all the OS considers his drives C, because that, the solution was Hidding the other OS partitions.

It will be D: or even E:, F:, G: etc. depending on all your other visible primary partitions on the same disk, on other disks and even on CDs.
WinNT has no problem installing on non-C: drive. This is the normal recommended procedure if you want to multi-boot DOS and NT. You get to see both partitions, there is no need to hide partitions on each boot, and you get the NT boot manager, which you could even use for launching 9x if you wanted to .