Multibooter

I have just created with UltraISO two .iso images of another CD containing out-of-spec directory names (e.g. a dot in the directory name), one created under Win98 and the other created under WinXP. When mounted on 2 virtual drives with Alcohol, Beyond Compare found both .iso images to be identical. So the phenomenon of these 3 directories "5.5DDocs", "5.6Addendum" and "5.6Tutorial" on my backup HDD being assigned different names by Win98 and WinXP is probably NOT caused just by a dot in the directory name. Maybe it is caused by the embedded blanks in the DOS directory names "5 ~1.5dd", "5 ~1.6ad" and "5 ~1.6tu". I guess the embedded blanks were automatically created as fillers because the first part of the directory name consists of a single character "5", and the suffix exceeds 3 characters. I don't know how the embedded blanks got into DOS directory names on my backup HDD. When, for example, I create under Win98 the folder "1.junk", Win98 assigns it the DOS folder name "1~1.JUN", without embedded blanks. Maybe it has something to do with ISO Level 1 (8.3 characters), it can't be coincidence that in each of the 3 directory names 4 blanks were embedded, giving a total length of 8 characters to the first part of each directory name. Am I missing a MS bug fix on my Win98 computer? The whole problem looks like a MS bug, which was fixed under WinXP.

What low-level dd-like copying tool would you recommend for creating a .iso image under Win98? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_unix

I am currently archiving about 300 old software CDs and have come across several problems. 1) Archiving software CDs with out-of-spec filenames A software CD, burnt around 1998, contained directory names which were not legal under ISO 9660. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660 I assume it contained 3 subdirectories with dots in their directory names: "5.5DDocs", "5.6Addendum" and "5.6Tutorial". Unfortunately I cannot check the CD anymore, since the CD has gone bad in the meantime, with silvery flakes peeling off the CD. Before the CD went bad I had made under Win98 an Ok file copy with Windows Explorer (and also with Unstoppable Copier) to a USB HDD of all files and directories on the CD. When I looked under Win98SE at these 3 subdirectories on the USB HDD they had the long file names "5 ~1.5dd", "5 ~1.6ad" and "5 ~1.6tu" (each with 4 embedded spaces, not correctly displayed here, and the long file name and the DOS file name were identical). Neither WinME ScanDisk nor standalone Norton Disk Doctor 2004 complained under Win98SE about the long file names. When I looked under WinXP SP2 at these 3 subdirectories on the USB HDD they had different long file names: "5.5DDocs", "5.6Addendum" and "5.6Tutorial". The only explanation I can think of why Win98 and WinXP assign different long names to the same directories is that when Win98SE stored an out-of-spec filename on the USB HDD, it somehow marked the filename as bad, and subsequently used the DOS name as LFN. In any case Win98 must have stored on the USB HDD the out-of-spec directory name of the CD, since WinXP reads it from the USB HDD. I came across this problem when I made a binary compary with Beyond Compare under WinXP. I compared under WinXP the file-copy backup on the USB HDD against a mounted .iso image created under Win98 of the files on the USB HDD: they did NOT match. WinXP read the directory names on the USB HDD as "5.5DDocs" and the corresponding directory name in the mounted .iso (created under Win98) as "5 ~1.5dd". The assigning by Win98 and WinXP of different long names to the same folders has 2 major implications: 1) Software backed up under Win98, from a CD with out-of-spec long names, into a .iso (or also as .rar, etc.) or even as a Windows Explorer file-copy will NOT work. A program looking for "5.5DDocs" will not look for "5 ~1.5dd" 2) Because of this out-of-spec problem, backup copies of CDs, made under Win98 may not be reliable. It may be preferrable to make backup copies of CDs under WinXP instead of under Win98. This 12-year-old CD may be an example to explain the somehat cryptic text in the Wikipedia article: "... most operating systems which can read ISO 9660 file systems have no problem with out-of-spec names. However, the names could appear wrong to the user." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660 Is there some software which checks whether a CD (or HDD) contains out-of-spec file or directory names?

I beg to disagree. There may be some issues when using huge files < 2GB, or files between 2-4GB with the 4GB file-size patch.Under Win98SE on my desktop, which has 2GB RAM installed, I have set the swap file to 3888 MB fixed (Minimum=Maximum), just to be on the safe side when handling huge files.

Here my personal experience with the official MS update esdi_506.pdr v4.10.2225: This update was necessary on my 10-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop, for using an internal HDD >30GB, up to 120GB. The Inspiron 7500 has a Phoenix Bios v4.0 Release 6.0, which apparently uses Phoenix BitShift translation instead of LBA. Without this update, Win98SE has problems with an internal 120GB HDD: a) a FAT32 partition I: (28GB, located after 4 logical FAT16 partitions altogether about 8GB) is displayed in My Computer, but when clicking on it in My Computer I get the err msg: "I:\ is not accessible" b ) Control Panel -> System -> Performance tab displays "drive I is using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system" c) problem installing Win98SE: a fresh installation of Win98SE on a 120GB HDD hangs/produces error msgs when ScanDisk starts checking beyond 32GB. Workaround: no scandisk when installing Win98SE on a 120GB HDD with this old BIOS. After installing this official update 2225, the above problems were gone. More info about esdi_506.pdr v4.10.2225 (Q243450) is at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...;NoWebContent=1 MS has put this update under the heading ScanDisk, even if it impacts much more. This old Phoenix BIOS is a nuisance on an otherwise great laptop. At POST, the internal 120GB HDD is reported as 65535 MB (=64GB-1MB). The BIOS reports the internal HDD as having 240 heads to Win98, even if it actually has 255 heads. I have not had any data loss using the internal 120GB HDD, maybe because of the way the HDD is partitioned. 120GB is the maximum which this old laptop takes, an internal 160GB HDD does not work.

Interesting link. Here a quote: "According to the Vista license, Microsoft claims the right to run spyware that makes clandestine online contact".I would fully trust Microsoft that they would not pass on whatever I am doing on my computer to US government spy agencies. I would fully trust that the NSA spy agency has better things to do than collecting 1TB of individual data on each inhabitant of this earth. But maybe the German and French government authorities do not have this trust. Maybe the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency can be interpreted incorrectly: "In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA was at risk of electrical overload because of insufficient internal electrical infrastructure at Fort Meade to support the amount of equipment being installed." "Development [of Windows Vista] was completed on November 8, 2006... On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista I would trust that this proximity in time is just coincidental.

I wouldn't delete any file created by Kaspersky. They are very sophisticated in protecting their keys. There is a good good chance that after deleting that stuff Kaspersky stops signature updates with the err msg "Not all files were updated. File black.lst [=blacklisted keys] is missing or corrupted. Please run Updater to fix the problem." And there is only a slim chance that re-running the updater will fix the problem.These "temp" folders are pretty big folders and tend to bloat backups. Nevertheless I always include them in my backups, otherwise Kaspersky may not make any more signature updates from a restored backup.

BBC: Microsoft to patch hole in Internet Explorer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8469632.stm "The bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share. According to web analytics company StatCounter Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share. In some markets, including Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE"

Maybe ebay. It's not sold or supported anymore by the new owner, Avanquest, after they got the product line of V-Communications. I bought v9.01 at a store in Jan.2008. The online live update feature to the last version, v9.04, does not work anymore, and System Commander is not mentioned at the Avanquest website anymore.I think v9.04 was never released on a CD for an easy fresh install, one would have to make a full install from the CD, e.g. of v9.01 or v9.03, and then in a second step run the previously downloadable version update file SC904_EN.exe and reenter the serial number of any release of v9. No idea why Avanquest didn't document an easier way to make a full fresh install in a single step by extracting the digitally signed SC904_EN.exe and then deleting or renaming \LiveUpdate\setup.log before installation. The alternative DOS installation method, which I prefer, is also hidden somewhere in the voluminous documentation. By running "SCIN.EXE INSTALL" under DOS, instead of Setup.exe, the alternative DOS installer is invoked, which doesn't install the now useless "Avanquest update" (= live updater) and doesn't modify the registry; the 2 .pdf documentation files have to be copied manually from the extracted installation source. One interesting feature of System Commander is its automatic handling of other boot managers built into various operating systems. The operating system selection menu of the NTLDR boot manager of WinXP, for example, does not appear at startup anymore, while System Commander is set as active, even if in "Startup and Recovery" under WinXP the NTLDR boot menu has been selected. With System Commander you have only a single "OS Selection Menu", and System Commander controls the boot managers built into other operating systems including Vista, so System Commander is kind of a top-level boot manager. After the operating system selection has been made, System Commander is not active anymore, it's gone, until the next reboot. The various versions of System Commander have a different automatic handling of operating systems. Old v5 ("System Commander 2000"), for example, does not suppress the boot menu of the WinXP boot loader, WinXP wasn't out in 2000 yet, otherwise old v5 works fine with WinXP, you just have a 2nd WinXP boot menu, which can be handled inside WinXP. v9, on the other hand, came out in 2007 and suppresses the boot menu of the WinXP boot loader, without modifying any Windows files. Except for differences in the automatic handling of new operating systems, the various versions of System Commander don't differ much, only added features, such as a GUI, partitioning and partition hiding. System Commander v9 will probably still be able to handle new operating systems released in 10 years from now. The only major limitation are the maximum of 26 OS selections in the "OS Selection Menu" and that System Commander works only with HDDs having 512 bytes/sector (p.263 of the user manual, under error messages). I have been using various versions of System Commander for about 14 years and am very satisfied with it. There is more discussion of System Commander here

The CP/M version of Spellbinders was marketed by HP as "WORD-125". A scanned-in copy of the WORD-125 user manual can be download from http://www.hpmuseum.net/capcha/freecap_wrap.php?r=1581 It is listed at http://www.hpmuseum.net/collection_document.php as "WORD-125_45533-90000_184pages_Feb82.pdf" I have been using WORD-125 and the MS-DOS version 5.4 for IBM PC MS-DOS, with files dated 21-May-1985. The CP/M and MS-DOS versions are quite similar, so the downloadable CP/M manual should be helpful. The MS-DOS version of Spellbinder runs Ok in a Win98 DOS window. I do have the MS-DOS manual, but I doubt that there are many left.

HDD speed is the last thing I would think about when making a partitioning plan for multi-booting. System Commander, which I have been using for many years, has quite a sophisticated security arrangement, probably for corporate use, but I never used it, I don't want to lock myself out For my old laptops I have removable left-bay modules and removable right-bay modules. Each module can hold a separate HDD, i.e. up to 3 HDDs in the laptop. By installing an operating system to a removable module, and keeping it subsequently out of the laptop, I can be certain that there is no undesired interaction between 2 operating systems. I have many mutually visible operating systems, and cross-infection is in general not very likely, although many years ago I had a virus which started to encrypt various partitions, and thereby impacted other operating systems.You can specify in System Commander which partitions you wish to hide after you made your OS selection. Malicious code will then not see these partitions. I am not experimenting with malware, so I prefer to have all partitions mutually visible. Different Windows operating systems, however, do have some interaction. Windows XP, for example, surreptitiously changes the partition type of an NTFS 3.0 partition [Windows 2000] to NTFS 3.1 [Windows XP type]. Upon each computer restart, System Commander checks whether the boot code was changed and if so, asks whether you want to accept the change or reject it. Unless you accept a changed boot code, System Commander replaces the boot sector and the previous boot files with clean stuff stored in a separate folder for each operating system. Boot sector viruses are not an issue if you use System Commander.

I have found IE to be necessary:1 ) for accessing websites which don't work properly with Firefox or Opera (mainly websites involving monetary transactions). I hope owners of these websites will eventually be subjected to big $$$ negligence/consumer protection litigation because they let consumers access their sites only with a browser which has been warned against by German and French government authorities. I would consider a commercial service offered from an IE-only website to be an "unsafe product". 2) some websites don't print out properly with Opera or Firefox, only with IE. IE is good at making hard copy printouts of web pages 3) occasionally for creating a good .mht file of a web page, in case Opera created an incorrect .mht file which didn't look like the original page

I am not so sure.1) It's a matter of trust. With technical products like programming languages I would trust Microsoft, but with products which could be useful for intelligence gathering I am not so sure whether I would not be just updating an older backdoor with a newer backdoor. 2) My internet browsing is nearly exclusively with Opera and Firefox under Win98, with IE 6.0.2600 installed, but never updated. I access the internet completely unprotected under Win98, only using occasional on-demand scans, mainly of new downloads. My computer hasn't had an infection for years. The existence of a rarely-used IE 6, with no updates, on my Win98 system hasn't led to an infection. Maybe a rarely-used IE6 without updates won't lead to an infection on a WinXP system either. On my WinXP SP2 system I have not updated IE6. jaclaz's evaluation might also apply to me, if I am lucky: I worry mainly about the netbook of the youngest member in the family, who is using IE6 under WinXP. The netbook was completely locked up twice in the past 6 weeks, lot's of trojans, and the netbook is part of the Win98/WinXP home network ... I agree, it's getting politicized, France has joined Germany http://www.msfn.org/board/german-governmen...pid-904054.html

BBC: France joins Germany warning against Internet Explorer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8465038.stm

BBC: German government warns against using MS Explorer Here the warning in the original posting: "BSI empfiehlt die vorübergehende Nutzung alternativer Browser". Nice to have such warnings by a government, like travel warnings issued by the U.S. State Department Here an article by Focus, one of the 2 major German political magazines, comparable to Time or Newsweek. The browser ratings listed there are 1=very good, 3=soso The warning is about IE 6, 7 and 8, i.e. about versions which came out with WinXP and later. Maybe this official warning will lead to banks in other EU countries, for example Caixa in Spain, to make their online banking accessible with alternative browsers, not just IE. All websites involving money should be accessible with alternative browsers. For example, I had problems using Opera at ebay, although Firefox works fine with ebay. It would be interesting to have a list of major websites which don't work properly with Opera or Firefox.

I have successfully created and restored with Ghost v11.0.2 an image of the System Commander HDD using the "-ir" switch for sector-by-sector cloning. System Commander booted fine from the HDD created with the "-ir" switch from the .gho image file. Neither PartitionMagic 8 nor Partition Table Doctor signaled any errors with the cloned System Commander HDD. The compressed .gho image file, created from a HDD previously cleaned with "sdelete -c", was about 1GB, using compression switch "-z9". I have created with Partition Table Doctor 3.5 a "partition table backup file" of both the original System Commader HDD and of the HDD restored from the .gho image file. Both "partition table backup files" (about 10k in size) were identical when making a binary compare with Beyond Compare. I have also created with MBRWizard image files of track 0 of the original and cloned HDDs. Both image files of track 0 were identical. Conclusion: Ghost v11.0.2 CAN create a good image file of a System Commander HDD if you use the "-ir" switch. No other disk imaging software I have tried could produce from an image file a good System Commander HDD. The "dumb" sector-by-sector cloning approach worked, while software using a "smart" approach and fast shortcuts could not create a good copy of a System Commander HDD from an image file.

Hi LoneCrusader,System Commander installs stuff on track 0 and on its install-to partition. I sometimes edit/replace those boot files which I want System Commander to load from the next boot onwards (e.g. autoexec.bat, config.sys or boot.ini. even io.sys) directly in the folders where they are saved/loaded by System Commander, e.g. in C:\SC\WINDOWSX\ for Windows XP. I also make a manual backup of C:\SC\ in case I want to reverse the changes in boot files made by the installation of new software. So I would not want to hide the partition where System Commander is installed. I doubt it. The error condition on which System Commander choked was caused by Ghost, plus the parameters I used with Ghost. Ghost created something bad on the cloned HDD. In my opening post #1 I stated: The System Commander user manual of v9 (.pdf) on p.263 explains: "The codes given help identify the source of the problem. Generally, you're given the option to boot into one of the four primary partitions on the first drive. Several combinations we've seen are: ... The second "X" [here: the ">" in the error code "2>"] indicates the error code returned from the hard disk BIOS. It can indicate the hard disk or controller has some type of problem, or might indicate bad partition information on the disk... Boot 2> or Boot3>. This error indicates that the file SYSCMNDR.SYS could not be found in any primary partitions on the first drive. To fix this, boot from a DOS or Windows 95/98/Me startup diskette and at the prompt, type FDISK /MBR. This will have no effect on partitions, but installs the generic MBR boot loader. After your operating system is running, you will need to perform a full installation of System Commander." This is the official work-around for the current problem, a poorly cloned HDD. You used the same work-around and re-installed System Commander on top of the existing installation after you created a bad disk image with SystemRescueCD / Partimage. BTW, System Commander is a dead product, but well documented. The re-installation workaround suggested in the manual leaves the original question: What else might not work on a poorly cloned HDD? Is the System Commander cloning problem just the tip of the iceberg?

That's my personal preference too, but there are several different issues which got intermingled in the last few postings, but I can only speak from my experience with System Commander:1) Multiple operating systems sharing a single partition: I had no problems with various DOSes co-existing on the same partition, provided they used the same code page. If I remember right, I even had various different Windows 3x installed on the same partition. Starting with Win95 it became problematic to have multiple instances of Windows on the same partition because they used the same folder "Program Files" and "My Documents', and one Windows would then use the others' "Program Files" or "My Documents". I actually had US Win95 and a localized Win95 running on the same partition. This was possible because localized versions of Windows would use different folder names, such as "Programme" under German Windows, instead of "Program Files" under US Windows. The 2 instances of Windows should therefore not have interfered with each other. But then the code page problems started. Folder and file names created under a localized Windows might contain special characters from their own code page. ScanDisk under US Win95 would detect the "bad" files names and clean them up/delete them. Various localized Win95 which I have seen, had come out of the box with some files having filenames containing characters specific to a non-US code page. 2) Visible partitions In 1997 I was using System Commander, but was checking out several other boot managers. I installed one which was based on hiding partitions, I think it was the PTS/Paragon Boot Manager v2.5 , and I didn't like it, I wanted to have everything on my computer accessible to me, not just one partition. Hiding partitions and selecting among various sets of boot codes are two different approaches. System Commander originally used the selection approach. If I remember right, the early versions of System Commander didn't have the ability to hide partitions. I assume V-Communications added this feature because competing products had it, and many people buy features. 3) Hidden partitions The problems caused by using different code pages, for example a US and a Farsi windows, on the same computer can be nasty. One approach to solve this problem is to run the non-US operating system on an otherwise invisible partition. My approach was to leave all partitions visible and to install the Windows with the non-US code page onto a removable Jaz disk. I had the Jaz disk only inserted when I would actually use that non-US operating system. 4) Always visible boot partition With System Commander whatever non-boot code is on the boot partition C: is (probably) always shared between all operating systems, even if they are on partitions hidden from each other. This shared boot drive might lead to some minor interference, but never posed a serious problem to me. Example: One Windows (e.g. on E:) crashed or hung. Windows or an application in it then wrote some stuff on the boot drive C: or C:\Temp\ If I would then immediately boot into another similar Windows (e.g. on F:), that Windows or the same application in it would process the crash logs etc on boot drive C: But this would happen also if Windows 1 and Windows 2 were installed on partitions hidden from each another. 5) Intentional sharing between different operating system on different partitions I had 2 instances of Win98 share the same fixed-size swap file on a special partition. I have several applications which were installed once under Win98, and which run fine under WinXP without re-installation, just by creating a desktop shortcut and by adjusting the path in the registry (e.g. a special version of Ghost), or by re-entering user settings.

Maybe lost clusters or some other corruption, due to a prior bad shutdown?

I am using an old D-Link DWL-AG530 PCI wireless card on my desktop, with which I am very content (connector for external Antenna, a-g dual band, drivers for Win98 thru Vista, with a slim untried chance that a generic driver could work under Linux). The driver download page is here and the manual download page is here For the chip inside my card (i.e. "Revision") there are 2 drivers under WinXP, and I am not sure which one I should use. 1) Driver v1.05 is of 23-Mar-2006 and has a "Radio On/Off" setting (can be set in Device Manager -> Network Adapters -> D-Link AirPremier DWL-AG530 Wireless PCI Adapter -> Properties -> Advanced tab -> Property "Radio On/Off") The Radio On/Off is a little buggy. Once I have set it to Off, I can turn it On again, but I only get an internet or network connection again if I reboot. This bug I can live with because I rarely use the Radio On/Off button, but when I do, it is very handy. The Radio Off setting can block the calling home by Microsoft and unruly software, when I occasionally have to turn the firewall off. Also, during the setup of a computer, when no firewall is installed yet, I can be sure that no undesired calling home takes place. I have used driver v1.05 under WinXP for a while and had no problems with it, and have never tried to uninstall it. 2) Driver v1.10 is of 24-Oct-2007, is WHQL, has the feature "Dynamic Frequency Selection" (which I probably will never need), but does NOT have the Radio On/Off setting anymore, maybe fixing the bug was too tricky. I have briefly installed driver v1.10. It seems to work, but I would know for sure only after having used it for a longer period of time. Uninstalling v1.10 may be a nightmare. I tried to uninstall v1.10 in a test, then installed older v1.05, but v1.05 would not work anymore. Here my 2 questions: 1) Is there software under WinXP with which I can turn the transmission by a wireless card off (and on), comparable to unplugging an Ethernet cable? 2) Which driver should I install, v1.05 or v1.10?

I just repeated running sdelete -c on the same 30GB FAT32 partition, but this time on a 2.2GHz dual core under WinXP. sdelete finished now after 43 mins [0.70 GB/min]. So CPU speed is important for sdelete.When I checked the cloned System Commander HDD (750GB), with PartitionMagic 8 under Win98, I saw that the 750GB had in the extended partition 50.132.5MB unallocated space, followed by 520.920.2MB unallocated space in a Primary partition following the Extended partition. In other words, the cloned HDD had 50GB of unallocated space in the extended partition, exactly as the original System Commander HDD and the extra space of the target disk (750GB-200GB) was made unallocated space outside the extended partition. Acronis Disk Director only displayed the sum total of unallocated space, and Partition Table Doctor did not complain. In any case, I resized under Win98 with PartitionMagic the extended partition of the 750GB to eliminate unallocated space outside of the extended partition.

Hi jaclaz,I didn't conceptually separate the stuff created after installing Vista on my 2nd HDD 2 years ago, whether file system related or partition related. Under Win98 PartitionMagic 8 would come up with an error message about the 2nd HDD with Vista on it and, if I remember right, Partition Table Doctor would start with an error msg suggesting to repair the Vista HDD. That was enough for me to dump Vista. That's the advantage of multibooting, as with System Commander: You can use the operating system you like best for a specific task, you are not limited to the operating system which came with your computer. I have become interested again in Vista/Win7 to look at their handling of UDF-formatted HDDs. And a UDF-formatted HDD has no partitions, only the UDF file system, but this doesn't make matters easier... BTW, Dietmar, who found the way to install Vista onto a FAT32 partition, was also using PartitionMagic 8: "6.) Before you delete the partition with the original Vista on it with Partition Magic 8, notice the exact size of this partition. Ok, delete this partition and build a new Fat32 partition at the same place with the same size as before on the same harddisk. Set it aktiv.... " http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...181&st=1711 Thanks again for your help and advice with the .gho imaging problem.

I'll be very interested to hear about your experience, especially if you restore from a disk image file.. Yes, this didn't change in v9 either. The manual of v9 p.238 states that System Commander can only hide primary partitions. There is a nifty work-around to solve the problems caused by Win98 and WinXP assigning drive-letters in a different sequence:In my partition plan (posting #1) I have partitions D: [bLANK1] and E:[bLANK2]. If I should later on use a 2nd HDD with a primary partition visible to Win98 [e.g. Vista on a FAT32 partition], Win98 would see that primary partition as drive letter D: [without the 2nd HDD, D was for Win98 the old 1st logical partition on HDD#1], assign higher drive letters to the logical partitions of HDD #1, and would not find its original partition G: [98_FAT32], which would now have the drive letter H: under Win98. By deleting the logical partition D: [bLANK1], which has the function of a drive-letter-placeholder for Win98, Win98 will find again its original partition G: Subsequently, after having deleted partition D: [bLANK1] I will have to insert before the WinXP partition a BLANK3 NTFS partition, which would be invisible to Win98. to avoid that WinXP won't be inaccessible after using a 2nd HDD. I don't know what went wrong. On my laptop I have a primary boot partition C:, and an extended partition which includes a logical partition for Win2k and another logical partition for WinXP, they are all visible and coexist nicely. I installed Win2k after WinXP and used the trick with SCIN.exe + assign unique boot serial number. Maybe WinXP was somehow using boot.ini, Ntdetect.com and Ntldr from the Win2k installation. I assume you had no primary partition, only an extended partition with C=Win2k and D=WinXP, I am always using a dedicated boot partition on which I install System Commander, preferrably under DOS. I assume System Commander has a limit of 26 different operating system selections, the "OS Selection Menu" shows only letters A-Z, but I have not found this limitation spelled out in the documentation. The operating system selections could be different operating systems, different service packs/releases/betas, different language/code page versions, or operating systems using differently patched io.sys, different autoexec.bat/config.sys etc. On my old laptop I have currently about 20 OS selections. I have never used System Commander to create or format partitions. I remember that the people at V-Communications used to consider PowerQuest as their main competitor. I guess that's why they included partitioning tools, the early versions of System Commander had no partitioning tools. I use PowerQuest PartitionMagic v8.01 Build 1312, very hard to find now. Build 1312 was their last bug fix, which avoids getting Error 1513, whatever that is: "Windows 2000 and XP use a new file record format, called I-Node, that is incompatible with the initial releases of PartitionMagic 8.x. When this format is detected, Error 1513 is generated." I have never used that feature The only time I used their "wizards" was for installing Vista, but supposedly only v9 can do this properly, not v8. Installing Vista in addition to WinXP and Win98 went relatively smooth.v9.04 seems to be the last version. It's amazing how fast Avanquest walked away from System Commander after they got the product line of V-Communications. System Commander was probably not a money maker, even if it was an excellent product, so out the door it went and every word about System Commander was expunged from their website.

I just put the the System Commander HDD, cloned with Ghost sector-by-sector with the "-ir"switch from a .gho file, into the original computer: it works fine Restoring the image to disk took 6 hrs 48 mins with my old 700MHz laptop. The bad side: the raw image/.gho file, from which I created the System Commander HDD clone, was 21.6GB. I will eventually repeat my experiment with sdelete -c on all partitions of the original HDD, to see whether the .gho image will shrink significantly in size. Creating an image file of the original System Commander HDD is essential for me, to be able to re-create the identical System Commander HDD on multiple HDDs or on multiple nearly-identical computers, or to archive/restore an old System Commander HDD backup. Zeroing out empty space on the original System Commander HDD is a time-consuming preparatory step before creating a raw image with Ghost -ir in another time-consuming step. I am still looking for a disk imaging tool which can create a workable image of the System Commander HDD, without copying the whole HDD/free space sector-by-sector, i.e. a disk imaging tool which satisfies the "assumptions" of System Commander. Any other suggestions? Excellent article, here a quote from it: The above quote explains why I would tolerate on my computer Vista/Win7 only on a FAT32 partition. As I stated above in posting #4: I consider Partition Table Doctor http://www.ptdd.com/ to be an absolutely essential tool, incrementally more valuable to me than Vista or Win7. No Vista/Win7-compatible version of Partition Table Doctor has been released up to now, even if their EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard is Vista Compatible, so Vista/Win7 on a Vista/Win7-created partition is a no-no for me.

Hi LoneCrusader,I'll try out the SystemRescueCd in the next few days. BTW, which version of System Commander are you using? To my knowledge the last version is v9.04, which I am using, also old v5 on my laptop. System Commander died about a year ago, and Avanquest has purged every reference to it from their website, and the online update doesn't work. I had purchased v9.01 at Fry's 2 years ago, and when I finally got around to install it about 6 months ago, the online update was dead. That's not a recommendation for Avanquest software, no idea what happened to the original developer V-Communications, they used to be a good company. The Wikipedia article lists a System Commander v10, which I have never seen, only Partition Commander v10, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Commander The Wikipedia article contains very little info, with some inaccuracies. The article is definitely in need of an update and is currently an example that not everything in the Wikipedia is correct. On my system, I don't let System Commander hide partitions. Under Win98 I have disabled the recycle bin, and under WinXP I have disabled the recycle bin and system restore [Control Panel -> System -> System Restore tab], so that WinXP doesn't create useless System Volume Information folders on the visible partitions of other operating systems. I back up WinXP under Win98, by raring up all files on the WinXP partition. When I want to restore WinXP, I simple delete, under Win98, all files on the WinXP partition and then un-rar the backup to the WinXP partition.Up to now (5+ years) WinXP has never interfered with Win98 on my system, but again, I use WinXP not that much, maybe 10% of my time, for tasks which Win98 can't do.