Grub4dos Guide - Example Multiboot Setup

The following instructions assume that the HDD's are unpartitioned. This section will focus on the first disk (hd0) - the Vista disk (hd1) will be covered later. To create the partition structure we will install the first operating system (Windows 2000) and then use the Windows disk management console to create the rest.

• Boot from the Windows 2000 installation CD and follow the instructions to create a 5GB partition with NT filesystem (NTFS).
• Install Windows to the partition created in the previous step. When the Windows 2000 installation has completed, boot into the operating system and open the Disk Management console (Start > Run... and type diskmgmt.msc)
• Right-click on the "Unallocated" section in "Disk 0" and choose option "New Partition..." - then follow the prompts to create a Primary partition, 10240MB (10GB) in size, of NTFS type.
• Repeat previous step, however this time create an extended partition using the remaining space.
• Right-click on the "Free space" section and choose option "New Logical Drive..." - then follow the prompts to create a Logical drive, 200MB in size, of FAT type.
• Repeat previous step, however this time create a Logical drive using the remaining space, of FAT32 type.
• To prepare the Windows Vista disk, Right-click on the "Unallocated" section in "Disk 1" and choose option "New Partition..." - then follow the prompts to create a Primary partition using all available space, of NTFS type.
• To install XP to (hd0,1), Right-click on the second partition on "Disk 0" and select option "Mark Partition as Active" - do NOT miss out this step.
• Insert the Windows XP installation CD and reboot the computer. Ensuring that CD is set to boot first in the BIOS.
• You will be prompted to "Press any key to boot from CD..." - do so or the BIOS will attempt to boot from the partition we set as active earlier, which is empty.
• Follow the instructions to install XP. When prompted to choose a partition, choose (hd0,1) - this should be "C:" drive.
• Complete the installation and boot into Windows XP, we will install Linux from XP.
• Copy the following files from the Linux Puppy CD, to the root of the first logical volume (hd0,4) -
• vmlinuz
• initrd.gz
• pup_4**.sfs
• zdrv_4**.sfs
• Create a marker file at the root of (hd0,4) - if using an IDE HDD create file idehd (without a file extension).

Attempting to install Windows Vista to (hd1) will result in the BCD store and other boot files being written to the active partition on (hd0). To avoid this, temporarily remove (hd0) from the system (either disable the disk in the BIOS settings or physically remove it by disconnecting the IDE/SATA lead). Make sure that the Vista disk is set as "Master" and install Windows Vista from the installation DVD.

When the Vista installation has completed, reconnect the first hard disk and set it as "master", and set the Vista disk as "slave".

Reboot the PC, you should boot into Windows XP, as (hd0,1) is still the active partition.

To create the Grub4dos boot configuration file menu.lst, open notepad and enter the following text -

Now save the document as menu.lst (make sure it is not saved as menu.lst.txt).

To create an option for Windows 2000 add the following text -

or,

As we do not want the other operating systems to be accessible from Windows 2000, we will need to add hide and unhide entries for the other partitions. Edit the Windows 2000 entry to -

If the Windows 2000 menu entry is selected, the only visible partitions will be (hd0,0) and (hd0,5) - the Windows 2000 partition and the shared data partition respectively.

To create an option for Windows XP, add the following text/entry -

or,

To create an entry for Linux Puppy, add the following text/entry -

or,

To create a Windows Vista entry we will need to use the map command to change the hard disk order, as Vista will not boot from a non first hard disk. Use the following command -

The menu.lst file should contain similar entries to the following -

Finally, Grub4dos will need to be installed by following the instructions here, and grldr and menu.lst will need to be copied to a supported device.