What should I load on a triple-boot PC?

[Tripredacus]

I have recently come into the "possession" of a computer at work with three hard drives. I wanted to see if I could install 3 OSes on it, but not sure which ones I should put on it. How about some recommendations? I also want to make sure that the three I pick will be able to work from a boot.ini or other bootloader. The computer isn't overly powerful, and was designed to be used as a security video recorder.

One of the OSes I would like to install is Windows NT 4 (probably server) but not sure about the other two.

OSes that are not to be considered:

- Vista

- Server 2003

- Server 2008

- Windows XP

- Windows 98

What do ya think?

[DigeratiPrime]

boot.ini is part of ntloader and considering your exclusion list that leaves you with only Windows 2000 or Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs I think.

[Tripredacus]

What about third-party bootloaders?

[jaclaz]

Oh, come on , get grub4dos (which grldr can be called from BOOT.INI) and you are free to install almost ANY OS, without losing any kind of compatibility with NTLDR/BOOT.INI/NTDETECT.COM:

http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome

https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/

The 0.4.3 2008-05-14 is a very good and stable release.

The 0.4.4 2008-08-06 should be the last tested one, do not use any other version if not needed or for experiments.

Guide here:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

The chapter that should mainly interest you:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/...all.htm#method3

jaclaz

Edited September 8, 2008 by jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

Well I tried some stuff out but it turns out that NT 4 won't install on the computer at all. It complains about the APIC and HAL.DLL upon install... the hardware just might be too new. So I am going the Virtual PC route instead.

Thanks for the info on Grub4Dos. It looks interesting. I might even use it on a VHD!

[jaclaz]

What you report is strange.

By setting the BIOS properly and using the standard HAL it should be possible to install NT 4.00 allright.

The problems you may found would more be in the motherboard integrated devices drivers for which a NT 4.00 driver may be not available, but using "default" drivers should be possible to make it work, although without the speed optimization that specific drivers may give.

However you're right, though I think it is possible, it would be a lot of troubleshooting work needing a huge numbers of attempts and probably not worth the effort.

About Virtual Machines, do yourself a favour, forget about Virtual PC and try Virtualbox:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

it is definitely faster.

jaclaz

Edited September 10, 2008 by jaclaz

[spacesurfer]

Yes! VirtualBox was amazingly fast compared to VPC on my desktop. :-)

However, it's not compatible with Comodo Firewall 3.0. :-(

Still haven't found out why Comodo won't run on VBox XP. If I find a solution, I would definitely switch to VBox.

[Tripredacus]

I have heard this about VirtualBox. This isn't going to be something that NEEDS to be reliable... just something I did when bored at work. I haven't even done anything with this machine yet!

The other day, after no more work for the day I think of something to do. Should I?

a. write a program that reads exported XML from Oracle and copies software from a network share onto the hard drive?

b. continue my ages-old project of writing a custom MBR to allow bootable hot-keys?

c. install Windows NT on some old computer I found buried under a desk?

Edited September 11, 2008 by Tripredacus

[jaclaz]

b. continue my ages-old project of writing a custom MBR to allow bootable hot-keys?

If I may, wheel (and hot water) have already been invented.

Here:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=334

http://mbldr.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=162108

Features

May boot up to 9 operating systems from primary partitions or logical disks in custom order

MBR boot loader is written in Assembly language and compiled with NASM

Installation/configuration program is written in C language and compiled with free tools (DJGPP under MS-DOS or FreeDOS; GCC under Linux and BSD; MinGW under Windows)

Installation/configuration program could be run under MS-DOS or FreeDOS and requires DPMI extension. Since mbldr 1.38 Linux and BSD are also supported. Since 1.39 Windows is also supported.

Uses text-mode for both boot and installation/configuration modes

Supports MBR backup/restore operations with partition table checks

Supports user-defined boot by pressing a configurable key ("1", "2", etc. or "F1", "F2", etc.) and showing boot timer activity in a form of progress-bar

Supports switching of an active flag on primary partitions

Supports boot timeout with loading of the default operating system (which is also configurable)

Fully customized boot menu indicating timer and default operating system

Supports booting of the operating systems which reside above 1024 cylinder

Hiding of inactive primary partitions (for FAT/FAT32/NTFS) like it is done in PQ PartitionMagic/OS-2 Boot Manager (i.e. only the partition being booted is visible, all others are hidden). This is done to prevent problems happening with MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows when living simultaneously on one hard disk. Please note that if you boot an operating system from logical disk all FAT/NTFS primary partitions will be marked invisible and inactive.

Detects most modern partition types properly (including hidden ones, NTFS, Linux native, LBA partitions, etc.)

It fits into first 446 bytes of a 1st sector on a hard disk, not requiring separate partition to be allocated

Supports all kind of hard disks supported by BIOS: ATA, SATA and SCSI

Customizable interrupt key of a boot timer. It may be useful if the default <Esc> conflicts with a hot-key reserved by BIOS

Development and packaging of mbldr requires only free software: FreeDOS, DJGPP, GCC, InfoZIP, NASM, UPX, wxWidgets, etc.

May be installed on any of the available HDDs found in a system

The installation/configuration program has multilanguage interface

Now, making the wheel rounder (and hot water hotter) may be a great accomplishment , though 512 bytes, actually:

512-2-(4*16)-4= 458 bytes

(whole size-magic number-4*partition entries-2K/XP/2003/Vista disk signature)

are a rather smallish environment for adding featires.

Cheers,

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

Yep I've tried everything possible with regards to the MBR. TRIF also helped a little but I wasn't trying to create something of my own. I was trying to duplicate what Ghost does in relation to capturing volume images in ImageX instead. For example, I have access to the same OEM Recovery Partition creation software that Dell and HP uses. We have an image that has Windows on the C drive and the recovery partition on a hidden partition on the same volume. I was able to redeploy the volume image using imagex but not able to recreate the MBR settings that the software writes. Or at least, not properly. We wanted to move totally away from using Ghost, but the further time went on, my project became more and more closer to reverse-engineering than towards software programming. So we dropped the idea because if we were to use that method to deploy, it would violate our EULA with the software provider.