I have two computers: one is win98/winXP dual boot and the other is a stand-alone win2000. I would like to take the harddrive from the win2000 PC and put it in my other PC to tripple boot. Is that possible? How do I set the winXP or win2000 boot loader.

My failed attempt:
I had the the win98/winXP harddrive as the master and win2000 as slave. I edited the winXP boot loader as so:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

I spent several hours last night trying to make it work only to fail and I had to reinstall win2000 because it would not load once I returned it back to it's original PC.

Do I need to reinstall win2000 since I'm connecting it to new hardware?

You probably need to install the OSes in order from the earliest to the latest (i.e. Win98,2000 and then XP)

If I have read your post correctly, your boot.ini should have read:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

you had the (1) in the wrong place .


But this would not have worked anyway because you should reintall the windows 2000 for it to work on another machine.

This will write the correct value into boot.ini anyway.

I give up. I did that, but it tells me it can't find the ntoskrnl.exe and other files. A reinstallation is probably the only way.