Re: Dual Booting Windows XP

From: Pegasus \(MVP\) (I.can_at_fly.com)
Date: 04/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 10:06:33 +1000

XOSL is a free product and is therefore not supported. However,
it has its own highly responsive newsgroup.

About its updates (or otherwise): XOSL seems to offer all the
facilities you could want for a boot manager, beating many
other products by a long shot, so why update it?

About BootIT: Can it boot into a WinXP installation that
resides in a logical drive, complete with its boot files?
XOSL can! What about if the WinXP installation resides
on the secondary slave drive?

"Jim" <null@null.com> wrote in message news:M7Xjc.952$ph.144@fed1read07...
> RE: XOSL, the only issue I have w/ this product is that it has not been
very
> well supported over the past few years, last time I checked, it hadn't
been
> updated in several years (its not even hosting by http://www.xosl.org
> anymore, its long time home). Don't get me wrong, I've used it the past,
it
> worked fine last time I used it (circa 2000), but this is one caveat that
> would concern me.
>
> My preference is BootIt NG ( http://www.bootitng.com ). This is very well
> supported, continually updated and enhanced, has its own NGs, provides
> partition management and imaging too. I was a prior user of Partition
> Manager and Drive Image, which I've since replaced w/ BootIt NG (about 4
> years ago). Just no need for these other tools anynore (for me anyway).
>
> As far as the primaries issues, you have to realize that these VERY large
> HDs are a relatively recent phenomenon, certainly far more recent than the
> semantics that rule the DOS-based geometry of your HD. I also believe the
> use of additional primaries wasn't to support multi-booting, initially,
but
> simply finer control over partitioning for a single OS. IOW,
multi-booting
> issues/concerns/limitations became what they are because these were
> afterthoughts (afterall, the first time I can even recall multi-booting an
> MS OS was Win 3.11 and the then-new NT 3.1 around 1993, again, well after
> the all these semantics were well in place).
>
> FYI, I have had no problems booting XP from numerous locations on the HD,
as
> yet, I've found no restrictions on where it can be loaded from. It seems
> whatever restrictions that preceeded it w/ Win98, WinNT, etc., have been
> eliminated or at least are much less stringent. I've cloned my
installation
> numerous times and booted w/o problems, and while I didn't test *every*
> possible HD location, I have been up and down my 120GB HD considerably.
So
> I don't think you'll have any real issues here as far as XP. If you want
to
> multi-boot Win98, WinNT, etc, as well, then yes, place these near the head
> of the HD, the older, the closer to the head they should be for maximum
> compatibility.
>
> One additional feature of BootIt NG I love is "unlimited primaries". This
> makes it possible to have (essentially) unlimited clones of your OS! I
> don't even use an extended partition (w/ logical partitions) anymore
because
> of this feature. You are still restricted to four primaries (or three
> primaries + 1 extended partition) at *runtime*, but for definitional
> purposes, the restriction is lifted, I typically have 15-20 partitions
> defined on my HD at any given moment, including MS-DOS 6.22, MS-DOS 7.1,
> Win98, XP, W2K, several XP snapshots (images made w/ BootItNG), several
DATA
> partitions, etc. And all the OS's load as C:, which avoids a ton of
> problems compared to the MS boot loader (makes cloning a trival exercise).
> Works great.
>
> HTH
>
> Jim
>
>
> "Less Than 0" <glassjawslipknot@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:e5ccec3.0404281329.49923334@posting.google.com...
> > Alright, I have a simple problem. Well probably not so simple since i
> > cant seem to figure it out. I have XP Images. I want to put more than
> > one on a hard drive. I then want to be able to choose which one boots
> > when i start the computer. I apply the first image. Use Partition
> > Magic 7 to resize it to about 10 gigs. Then i use PM7 to create
> > another primary partition. I apply the second image. Goes on great.
> > But i can only boot to the first image. I have read that you have to
> > have both your OS's below 8GB to be bootable so i am going to try
> > this next. If it works then i suppose my problem is solved. So my
> > question is, is there a way around this? What was the point of saying
> > you can create 4 primary partitions, yet you cant boot from them past
> > 8GB? Seems like a waste to me, especially with the size of drives now
> > days. Any help would be appreciated.
>
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Proposed enhancements to MD
    ... The attached patch is for the partition ... >, Adaptec, and many others must continue to support new ... >> the partitions on an array and properly boot them as it would boot a ... root fs exists on array, but md didn't see them show up, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Dual Booting Windows XP
    ... > XOSL is a free product and is therefore not supported. ... primaries, the issue is, for all intents and purposes, moot. ... partition, as it was intended to be. ... NG support has its place/value, but its not very comforting to ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: Multi Operating system boot (run out of primary partitions!)
    ... I'm using XOSL to boot two primary partitions now. ... It seems you allowed XOSL to install itself into an existing DOS ... There are no .exe files on this partition, ... You will need some further pointers to install OSs in logical drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: booting from a USB drive
    ... not the kernel) on a machine that doesn't support USB ... So the kernel and any other file, which is used during the boot process has ... you usually put that directory on its own small partition. ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • Re: dual boot
    ... Since your primary partition is NTFS, you cannot boot into Win98, ... Leave WinXP in drive C:. ... Create an 8 MByte partition at the far end of the disk for XOSL. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)