How to Multiboot Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux Mandrake 7.0
Posted: June 29, 2000
Written by: Keith "Farrel" McClellan

Introduction

Multibooting OSes is one of the most complicated things you can do to your computer on the software end of things. Most operating systems are designed with the idea in mind that they will be the operating system on the computer, and then add in multibooting support near the end just so they can say that they will play well with others. Not only that, but Microsoft operating systems don’t even consider non-Microsoft OSes to be operating systems – and that makes it tough to multiboot the computer with another OS. It is possible, however, and in this guide I will show you how to go about doing that.

Overview

As you can tell from the title, in this guide I will be explaining the steps necessary to multiboot Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux Mandrake 7.0. What I didn’t say is that we are going to do our utmost to forgo LILO wherever possible. We are going to do this by making the Windows 2000 boot menu the boot menu of choice for the computer. Yes, in the previous paragraph I said that Microsoft’s OSes don’t play fair with other company’s OSes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t force it to. The following things will be covered in this guide:

- Partitioning and Formatting your HD
- Installing Windows 98
- Setting up Windows 98 to be Dualbooted
- Installing Windows 2000
- Setting up Windows 2000 to be Multibooted
- Installing Linux
- Setting up Linux so LILO doesn’t overwrite the MBR
- Adding Linux to the Windows 2000 Boot Manager
- Post-Installation Setup

Hard Drive Preparation

For the purposes of this guide I am going to assume that you are starting with a fresh, unpartitioned and unformatted hard drive. If you aren’t, you are going to need to take extra steps to complete this guide. The easiest way would be to back up all of your data files and then repartition your hard drive as explained below. This will save you a bunch of aggravation.

Now, fdisk will not create Linux partitions, nor will it even recognize valid Linux partitions, so we will only be using fdisk for creating the Win9x and Win2k partitions on the hard drive. Before we continue, make sure that you have a hard drive that is at least 6 GB, preferably 8 or larger (particularly if you install a lot of games/applications) because we will be dedicating at least 1.5 GB to each of the operating systems (more for Linux). When you are in Fdisk, you will need to create two 1.5 GB FAT32 partitions for your Microsoft OSes. Once you have done this, you will need to reboot your computer. Then go ahead and format both of the partitions, reboot the computer again and start the Windows 98 installation. To boot and reboot your computer, you may need to use a Win9x boot disk.





Installing Windows 98

I have already covered this topic in its own guide as well as in several other guides. As such, instead of going all into it again I will simply go over a few pointers that will save you some time and include a few guidelines for preparing the installation to be multibooted.

- Using the command setup /iw will circumvent some of the annoying copyright notices and such and speed up the installation process.
- Install as few extra components as you can get away with.
- Make sure you install Win9x to the C: drive and not to the D: drive. This will make it much easier to multiboot your computer because Win9x is the least flexible of the OSes that will be installed.

Setting up Windows 98 for Dualbooting

There are a few things you can do to set up Win9x for dualbooting. First and foremost would be to install any drivers, etc. that your computer requires. However, it is not advisable for you to install any 3rd party applications at this point in time. You will need to wait until after you have installed all three operating systems to do that. One other thing you will need to do before continuing would be to set up a permanent swap file. You can do this from within the System applet – I would recommend setting it to at least 128 MB, more if possible. You will find that the small partitions for the OSes will ‘magically’ fill up during regular use (even though they will clear out after a reboot) if you don’t set up a permanent swap file. If you wish, later you can try to share swap files with Windows 2000, but I won’t be directly covering it in this guide (however, you can find it in the Win2k HD/Mem tweak guide).

Installing Windows 2000

Pop in your Windows 2000 CD while you are booted into Windows 98 and choose to install the operating system. You are going to want to make sure of two things in the setup so that you don’t mess up your computer. The first thing would be to make sure that Win2k doesn’t install over Windows 98 (that would defeat the purpose) and the other thing would be to make sure that the OS gets installed on the D: drive and not the C: drive. The two operating systems, while they can be installed on the same partition, don’t play well together and that can cause a problem.

Setting up Windows 2000 for Multibooting

There are a few things that you should do now before you continue on with the Linux installation. The first thing I would do is, once again, install any drivers, OS updates, etc. that your system requires and make sure the OS is up and running properly. Once again, this isn’t the time to start installing any applications - that time will come later. You are going to want to make sure that the swap file (system applet) is set up properly. If you want to, this is the time to set up swapfile sharing.





Installing Linux

At this point approximately 3 GB of the hard drive should be partitioned and in use by Windows. Installing Linux is a breeze for the most part, but if you are uncomfortable with setting it up on your own then I would recommend that you read the How to Install Linux Guide that I wrote. There are a few things that need to be addressed that are different from what is set out in that guide, however.

The first thing would have to be setting up the disk partitions. Using Disk Druid to set up the rest of your system partitions would definitely be advisable at this point. First, you should set up your Linux Native File System partition – it needs to be at least 1.5 GB and should be mounted as [/]. Next, you should set up your Linux Swapfile File System Partition – because Linux uses the swapfile so efficiently, you can probably get away with 128 MB unless you are running a server or otherwise have a large I/O system. After you have set up both of those partitions (they should both be on the first 8 GB of the hard disk – we can’t totally get away from using LILO), go ahead and split up the rest of the HD as you please. I personally have two FAT32 partitions – one for applications and one for games, but you can set it up any way you want (even making another Linux partition if you plan on downloading or installing a lot of other Linux software). Before you leave Disk Druid, however, take a note of the internal Linux name of your [/] drive (ex: hda5). You will need this in a few minutes.

The next thing that you really need to do is make a boot disk for Linux. If you don’t, you are pretty much screwed if you mess stuff up because it is pretty damn close to impossible to recover a Linux installation unless everything goes perfectly. So don’t ask, just do it!

The last thing you will need to do is set up the bootloader (LILO) to point at your mounted HD [/]. That is why you needed to take note of the drive's internal name. This will prevent LILO from overwriting the Master Boot Record but will allow us to boot into Linux once we’ve set up the Win2k Boot Manager up properly. When setting up LILO, it is recommended that you remove any references to Windows from within the loader, because any entries would be more than a bit redundant.





Adding Linux to the Win2k Boot Manager

To add Linux to the Win2k Boot Manager I would recommend using a dos program called Bootpart. You can do this other ways but this is much easier. You can use this program to do lots of great stuff, and it is really useful to keep around (it can even build brand new boot sectors for various Microsoft OSes). To use the program, boot into Windows 98 and ‘Restart the Computer in MS-DOS mode’. First you will need to find out the number of the partition that you have Linux installed on (Linux Native partition). To do this, type (TT)bootpart list(/tt) and look for the number of your Linux Partition. Once you know the number of your Linux partition, to add it to the Windows 2000 bootloader you need to type (tt)bootpart # c:\filename.bin OS name(/tt) (ex: bootpart 5 c:\linux.bin Linux Mandrake 7.0). Then you will be able to boot into Linux without a problem from within the Windows 2000 boot manager. Just remember that this program has saved a file called linux.bin on your c: drive’s root directory and if you were to delete that file you would have to use the program to recreate it before you would be able to boot into Linux without your boot disk.

Some of this information was from the 'NT OS Loader + Linux mini-HOWTO.'

Post Installation Setup

Once all three operating systems are installed and all of the available HD space has been partitioned and formatted, you can go ahead and start installing your applications. I would personally recommend going and installing all of the applications in Windows 98 first (make sure you install them to one of the empty partitions) and write down all of the settings you install/change. Then go into Windows 2000 and install all of the programs to the same place and using the same settings as you did in Windows 98. This will allow them to share application HD space so that you have as little overlap as possible.

Once that was done, I would use 98Lite to separate Internet Explorer from Win9x if I were so inclined. I have found that I prefer separating Win9x and IE after both have already been installed so I can continue to use IE if I feel so inclined but still have the extra stability given by using 98lite.

Other Stuff

Of course, there are other things that you should probably be doing if you have just installed three operating systems. I would go about making sure that all three were set up properly, have all the appropriate drivers installed (even though I’ve already mentioned that a bunch of times), etc. Setting up Linux can be a chore (I’m thinking of writing up a guide just to cover that, as a matter of fact), so the earlier you get started, the faster you’ll finish.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide will help you get situated with Linux without losing the ability to use your favorite Microsoft OSes (or for that matter, your favorite games… heh). If you have any comments or questions, as always, feel free to e-mail me with them.

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