Multiple booting question

[ashwa]

hi,

i tried to had Win98,2000,xp,2003 as my multiple boot. started with win98 but when it came to "installing hardware compnents' part with some 8 mins remaining it showed this 'your multi-funtional device (Standard Dual PC IDE controller) has some child device using 32-bit drivers and other using compatibility mode drivers. This configuration is not supported, so your computer has been halted to prevent corruption"

i m having 160GB SATA HD,AMD athlon dual core

then i had win2000, XP & server 2003 running successfully as my multiple boot option installed on different drive. with drive C as my active partition having win2000 in it.

i tried to install vista with DVD ROM as 1st boot device but it kept showing error some file/driver missing windows\system32\drivers\fltmgr.sys

i tried to install vista after booting with XP. installation started but after copying files PC restarted n then nothing happened...blank screen, not even the multiple boot options anymore.

i reformatted my HD, installed XP & then successfully installed Vista but then i installed win2000 & woof! Vista was gone from boot option though the files were there in the drive but now i had XP & 2000 as boot option.

is it possible to have all 4 as multiple boot option? if yes then whats the proper order of installation? if no then which all Windows OS can co-exist with Vista as part of multiple boot.

have few more queries regarding multiple booting with linux but later


looking forward to answers,
regards.

 

[kimsland]

In this order
Dos (up to you)
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows Xp
Sever 2003
Vista
Linux

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q217210

 

[ashwa]

In this order
Dos (up to you)
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows Xp
Sever 2003
Vista
Linux

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q217210

tnx, any idea y win98 wasnt loading, does win98 has HAL? what to make out of the error win98 was giving.

y was i not able to install vista?

 

[kimsland]

It can get confusing with 7 Partitions and Active and Fat32 and NTFS
There's a lot online at Google on this, but I'd recommend just to try the above sequence first, one at a time

 

[ashwa]

It can get confusing with 7 Partitions and Active and Fat32 and NTFS
There's a lot online at Google on this, but I'd recommend just to try the above sequence first, one at a time

tnx for replying buddy. i already tried. win98 wont load i guess due to hardware incompatibility with win98. already had win2000 then winXP & then server 2003 running successfully.

but when i tried to install vista it showed error as posted in #1

 

[kimsland]

Not sure what you mean, Windows 98 should install on any computer
True any Sata drive may require the Sata drivers (made for Windows 98) which may be a concern.
But without any other OS installed (especially on ATA) Windows 98 should install

 

[gbhall]

I think Win98 is trying to tell you what is wrong ! You seem to have compatibility mode (16-bit in other words), running on your IDE channel - that can be floppy disk or more likely CD rom or DVD drive. This can happen if you are not sure what the Bios is assigning, or more likely it is due to SATA drives not being able to talk to Win98 CD at setup. The way round this in XP at any rate, is to load drivers for SATA with an F6 press at first boot of the CD. I'm not sure if there is an equivalent method for Win98, and it may be there isn't. Although I do have Win98 in a multiple boot myself, it is installed on a secondary drive which is IDE.

There is a good chance you may not be able to find Win98 drivers for quite a lot of your current PC, like chipset, onboard video, peripherals, so the effort of trying to install may prove fruitless in the long run.

I have to admit that XP does it for me, and I have not booted into Win98 for a long, long time. The only way XP cannot run Dos programs successfully is when the mouse fails to work except in full-screen mode, and colours are quite different - yeah supposed to be VGA, but they're not. I have noticed on the other hand, that more recent PC's running XP pro have quite reasonable support for Dos programs now, in particular the mouse does work in a window, but not quite as responsively as I would like.

 

[ashwa]

ok forget win98, maybe sata driver is needed for that.

i never needed 3rd party installation for sata while installing XP...installed xp over n over but never needed one..good for me i guess..

any solution y vista is ruining my multiple boot? screen goes blank after copying vista files & my mutiple booting is gone

 

[kimsland]

The familiar boot.ini file of previous Windows versions has been replaced in Windows Vista with a new boot file called BCDedit. It is unfortunate that, unlike, boot.ini the BCDedit file is not the easiest of files to actually edit. Some would say that the boot.ini file was a nightmare, well BCDedit is absolutely horrendous.

For more information on the Vista Boot manager visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af778.mspx

It basically killed boot.ini I suspect

 

[ashwa]

The familiar boot.ini file of previous Windows versions has been replaced in Windows Vista with a new boot file called BCDedit. It is unfortunate that, unlike, boot.ini the BCDedit file is not the easiest of files to actually edit. Some would say that the boot.ini file was a nightmare, well BCDedit is absolutely horrendous.

For more information on the Vista Boot manager visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af778.mspx

It basically killed boot.ini I suspect

tnx kim. appreciate ur quick replies

if vista's bcedit replaced boot.ini then how can i have vista along side 2000,xp,2003? i think vista should co-exist with all three i mentioned but seems it wont.

has anyone tried having all 4 as multiple boot?

i have done dual boot with xp & vista but multiple boot along side 2000,xp,2003 seems to be a problem