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PC911 > How-To > Windows > Multi-booting Windows

Testing It

Let's test our setup to make sure it works correctly.

  1. Reboot the system, select the first OS from the System Commander boot menu and press Enter.

    Does it boot to DOS? Great.

  2. Reboot the system, and repeat for each OS.

Four reboots later you should be a happy camper after seeing that everything works perfectly. But by now you are probably also ready to choke your PC's speaker for its annoying chirp every time the boot menu comes up.

To turn off System Commander's sound:

  1. At the boot menu, press Alt-S on your keyboard.

  2. Select Timeouts and default OS.

  3. Scroll down to Select sound and use the left cursor key to change it to Quiet.

  4. Escape your way back to the boot menu.

Installing Drive Image and Partition Magic

The last thing to do is installing Drive Image and Partition Magic on your DOS partition for easier and faster access.

  1. Boot to DOS using System Commander.

  2. When you're at the DOS prompt, verify that it reads C:\.

  3. Type md pqdi and press Enter to create a directory for Drive Image.

  4. Type md pqmagic and press Enter to create a directory for Partition Magic.

  5. Type md images and press Enter to create a directory to store your images in later on.

  6. Insert your Drive Image 3.02 disk.

  7. Type copy a:\*.* c:\pqdi and press Enter.

  8. Insert your Partition Magic 5.01 disk.

    This one has a hidden system file on it that we have to unhide before copying the files.

  9. Type attrib -h -s a:\pqpb.rtc and press Enter.

  10. Type copy a:\*.* c:\pqmagic and press Enter.

  11. Type attrib +h +s a:\pqpb.rtc and press Enter to hide the system file on the floppy again.

  12. Modify the Autoexec.bat and add the path to these programs for easy access. Type edit c:\autoexec.bat and press Enter.

  13. In the window that displays, look for a line that reads something like PATH C:\DOS. Put your cursor at the end of this line and add ;C:\PQDI;C:\PQMAGIC so that the line now reads:

    PATH C:\DOS;C:\PQDI;C:\PQMAGIC

  14. Press Alt then F then X and select Yes to save the file.

  15. Reboot the system.

After reboot, you'll have easy access to Partition Magic 5.01 and Drive Image 3.02 from DOS at any time. Simply boot the system and select MS-DOS 6.22 from the boot menu. At the C:\> prompt, type pqdi and press Enter to start Drive Image, or type pqmagic and press Enter to start Partition Magic.

That's it! Believe it or not, you're done. You just successfully set up a perfect Windows Multi-Boot system from scratch. Even though this might have taken a while, it should have helped you to get a better understanding of a multi-boot setup, partitioning, file systems, and different operating systems, especially if this was your first time of setting this up.

   
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