tripple boot

[benjamin1254]

i know there is a section for boot and hardware but i figured since i dident know if it belonged there id ask here instead. what i want to do is take my partitioned hard drive i have just installed on my pc and make it so it would tri boot 3 diffrent operating systems. I want to tripple boot windows me which i got on right now. I want to boot from there windows xp pro and knoppix so I dont have to use the cd at all. any ideas on this would be great.
thank you!

[Harry Kuhman]

XOSL

[benjamin1254]

harry that dont tell me much besides it is a boot manager.... id like to keep things a bit easier then having to dongle around with a boot manager! i just dont feel like messing with them!

[CrashedAgain]

You will have to use a boot manager of some sort, something has to control your triple boot system. Knopiix comes with lilo, either lilo or grub can be set up to handle your triple boot.

So: first partition your HD.

1. partition for winME. 2 Gig is lots. Format vfat.
2. partition for XP. don't know how big, doesn't have to be huge, it is for the operating system only (not data). Format either NTFS or vfat.
3. partition for Knoppix, 4-5 Gig, format ext3
4. swap partiton, 500 meg, format linux swap.
5. rest of HD vfat for data. will be shared data drive for all operating systems. Always keep your data separate for your O/S the better to keep it safe if the O/S crashes.

Install both windows systems first. There is info on installing dual windows systems I think in MS's knowledge base. Google for it.

Then install knoppix. Let the installer put knoppix on the MBR, it should detect & set up boot entries for both windows systems. edit /etc/lilo.conf to fine tune the boot loader.

[jjmac]

benjamin1254

>>
... what i want to do is take my partitioned hard drive i have just installed on my pc and make it so it would tri boot 3 diffrent operating systems. I want to tripple boot windows me which i got on right now. I want to boot from there windows xp pro and knoppix so I dont have to use the cd at all. any ideas on this would be great.
thank you!
>>

I have to make to many assumptions with this, but do i get it that you have a disk partitioned now for "Win ME".

And what you want to do is free up space for two other distros ...

And possible the second part would be ...

How to get Knoppix onto the hdd ?

Reasonable assumption on my part i suppose, but an assumption none the less.


Could you clarify please. If thats the case, it is quite trivial to do. You will have to defrag your Win ME, then youse a "resizing" tool to shrink its' partition. Assuming it occupies the whole disk (another assumtion ).

fips.exe comes to mind, but there are others that people could mention. The rest would just involve creating a few partitions.

More complete info please, disk size, how much you want to leave with 'Win ME' etc ...


jm

[poppe]

Partitoning your drive should actually be far simpler than this. Knoppix will definitely need an ext2 or 3 file system, above and beyond that you can simply use FAT32 for both Windows ME and XP. I'm not sure whether the Knoppix installer will give you the option to install around other operating systems or not. So, in your case I would start fresh, beginning with Knoppix as the first install. First, just set up a partition on your hard drive 2 -3 GB should be fine. Format your partition, then run the Knoppix installer. Even if you used a simple partition manager like Fdisk. The Knoppix installer should rewrite that partition. After installing Knoppix, install Windows ME to 'free space', and no you don't need a partition for a second OS. The Windows installer will give you the option to overwrite or install to freespace. Choose free space, and finish that install. Next of course comes the Windows XP install. Again use free space, as well as use FAT32 for your XP file system. If you use FAT32 then not only will Win ME be able to have read/write access the XP portion of your harddrive, but Knoppix will as well. However, neither WinME or XP will be able to access the Knoppix portion. Anyway once XP is done installing when you reboot you should see a menu asking you which OS you want to boot to. In the event that you don't see all of your operating systems, locate (in the XP portion) boot.ini. Boot.ini is the text file that produces the menu options for multiple booting. I don't remember the line that needs to be in there as I've always used GRUB myself. If necessary just look on the forum or Google it... Good luck.


"The true warrior knows that there are no enemies but himself, and those that appear before him as enemies are merely pale reflections of his own dark self" - Anonymous

[chris-harry]

i dont know if this is of any use... but when i get into lilo it says...

Linux <- hda1 <-- a 10 Mb partion... very big nothings on it
Linux <- hda3
Windows <-hda2

and i can pick anyof them...