operating systems how many at one time

Hey everyone how goes it? How many os can you have on one hard drive? And is there a free choice boot program that works good? Thanks for any help.

Specs
gig 965 pds3
2gig ram
intel e8400
320 gig hd
xp right now
want to try xp vista ubuntu and freespire maybe others.

 

As many oses as you want.

It's called boot loader/manager. Google GRUB.

 

People do not come here to to be told to Google.

Provide assistance, please, or do not post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_GRUB

 

Windows OSes need to be installed on a Primary Partition, you can have up to 4 Primary Partitions on a single HDD, Assuming your HDD is large enough
The oldest version OS need to be installed first, the newest OS would be installed last (98 likes to be on the first partition, Win 2000, XP don't care what partition)
No boot software is needed when the above method is used....:major

The simplest solution is usually the Best


I've been multi booting for several yrs, the PC I'm using here has XP & X64

 

Grub...

 

hi,

i suppose you could have as many as you can deal with, with various ways of loading them,

i have a windows 2000 drive with microsoft virtual machine 2004 with 2 more w2k's, 98se and xp,
i also have innotecs virtual box with mint, freespire, ubuntu and open solaris on,
i also dual boot with mandriva linux as my primary o/s and have a bootable usb knoppix (my mobo uses boot options from F11)

virtual pc

http://majorgeeks.com/Virtual_PC_d4101.html

virtual box

http://www.virtualbox.org/

 

Thanks to all for the replies I appreciate it,
To hawklord:

is this an external hd? forgive my ignorance.....
what I wanted was xp then vista then freespire ubuntu and what ever comes in to play after. I have an internal 320 gb hd and external 500 gb but I thought you couldnt run them off of usb because of lack of speed...
and now that I remember do I really need a program like grub because the comp will ask you which one you want to start wont it?...... I think I remember trying to fix a friends and it had two win 98 and it asked us but maybe he had something on it..... thanks again to all and any more info will be great.

 

Asus thanks for the earlier reply

I too agree until I learn more the easier the better for now why only 4 I s it because of room or the type of hd or ???? Being new at this sucks but in a way kind of fun too...

 

You don't need GRUB to install multiple versions of Windows. If you want to install Windows and Linux on the same computer and have a screen appear during startup that gives you a choice of OS to boot, then I believe you need GRUB.

That was answered by ASUS back in post #4.

 

no,

i have my linux on a primary/master ide drive and my windows on a secondary/slave ide drive,
grub is used but not installed on the windows drive,

when my pc boots i get the grub loader screen with a mandriva or w2k option - only because i edited my boot/grub/menu.lst to point to ntldr on the w2k slave drive,

dual booting this way allows me to remove my linux drive, set my w2k to master and it will never know linux has been there
or
remove my windows drive, edit menu.lst to remove the w2k entry and linux will never know windows has been there

both ide drives are small ones, its my sata drives that are the biggies, 2 internal and 1 external, all partitions formated to ntfs - problem

naaa - i have the ntfs-3g drivers installed in linux so i have read/write access to all windows and ext2fs.sys installed in windows to allow read/write access to linux (this by-passes the fat32 partition route)

my knoppix is booted from a 2gb pen drive and can access both systems with read/write access,

the virtual machines are all locked within themselves - not tried anything with them - apart from 'drag and drop' each way,

i can edit my menu.lst to allow any o/s

tapping my F11 at p.o.s.t gives me a choice of boot options as well, before any boot loader loads,
i'm going to have a play with an sd card - because i can :-D,

hope this helps and sorry if its a bit to much info

 

Hawklord thanks for the reply, no it wasnt too much info, just what I needed actually, I like how you set it up and it made me think I will try it that way too so they are seperated and dont know the other is there. I havent played much either with the linux stuff yet because I was told you want to install all the windows you want first before you do linux but now that I know you can have multiple hd in the same case and chose which one to boot without having to plug and un plug hd this is nice...!!!:-D I need to learn more I know but I'll get there but from what i have seen linux does seem like it may be a little interesting to move and program at first and get easier just like anything else thanks again.

 

glad i could help,

if you are thinking of trying my way then another few helpfull tips would seem appropriate,

try a few live cd's to find one you like and that will work with your hardware (no amount of fixing i've tried can make ubuntu/mint work)

http://distrowatch.com/

if you don't have a partition resizer/manager, then knoppix has one built in (available from distrowatch)

its a bit of messing but i only had the hdd i was installing linux on 'live' in my case, i then rebooted to confirm linux was ok and edit the menu.lst file,
then powered off,
installed the windows drive, booted up and chose w2k from the grub boot options,
if its working ok, power off again and install any storage drives,

doing it this way (i found) makes finding any errors easier - and saves a big mishap,