Multi-booting Windows Contents - Introduction/What You Need - Starting From Scratch/Making A Battle Plan - Fresh Installation - Step-By-Step - System Commander - Installation, How It Works, Customizing - Testing It and Adding Partition Magic and Drive Image - Adding An Operating System To Your Collection Afterwards - Drive Imaging Made Easy, Partition Magic - Tips and Troubleshooting Introduction Having multiple versions of Windows available can be helpful in many ways for home as well for business use. For example, you prefer working with Windows NT 4, but other family members prefer Windows 98 and Windows 95. Or maybe you mainly use Windows ME but you have a game that only runs in Windows 98. You could be a software engineer who needs to test some code in different operating systems. Perhaps you are a QA tester and need to put an application through its paces in several operating systems. Whatever the reason may be, unless you have multiple PCs and plenty of desk space available to you, a computer with a multi-boot environment is the optimal setup. A PC with a multi-boot setup allows you to switch between different versions of Windows by simply restarting the PC and selecting the desired operating system. The instructions in this guide will show you how to take a machine with a blank hard drive, and turn it into an efficient multi-boot machine. You'll learn about: Creating and managing multi-boot environments with System Commander 2000 Installing different versions of Windows operating systems Creating and restoring images of partitions Creating, deleting, moving, and resizing partitions If the instructions seem a bit long, it is because they were written for detail and clarity and to cover almost any possible situation, and to help make the process as simple as possible. What You Need There are of course several ways of setting up a multi-boot system and making drive images. We'll leave it up to you what Windows versions you decide to multi-boot and what boot manager program you want to use. In our example, we started out with a collection of CDs and floppies for the following programs: - MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk - Windows 98 Boot Disk - Windows NT 4 Setup Disks - Windows 2000 Setup Disks - MS-DOS 6.22 Installation Disks - Windows 95 Installation CD - Windows 98 Installation CD - Windows ME Installation CD - Windows NT 4 Installation CD - Windows 2000 Installation CD - System Commander 2000 Installation CD - http://www.v-com.com - Partition Magic 5.01 Rescue Floppy Disk - http://www.powerquest.com - Drive Image 3.02 Rescue Floppy Disk - http://www.powerquest.com - Current drivers for all hardware for all Operating System you plan to use! - Service Packs for Windows NT 4 and/or Windows 2000 This collection is a good start for a multi-boot toolkit. Starting From Scratch In this section we will cover the process of taking a computer with a completely blank hard drive, installing the operating systems of your choice, and creating a multi-boot menu with System Commander 2000. This process should only be used when you want to set up a brand-new computer or if you want to erase your current hard drive (because it is beyond salvation) for the purpose of setting up a multi-boot environment. If you already have the basic setup (System Commander and several operating systems installed) and just need to reinstall an operating system or create/restore a drive image, skip to the appropriate chapter later in this guide. What Is The State Of Affairs On Your Hard Drive? Before you even think about installing anything, you need to figure out the current state of affairs on your hard drive, and come up with a partitioning scheme. Getting organized, thinking it out and planning the installation before starting out will save you a lot of potential problems in the future. 1 - Insert either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive. It doesn't really matter which disk you choose, both will get you to a DOS prompt. Booting with the Windows 98 Boot Disk will take a little longer, though, so if you're the impatient type and want to shave valuable seconds off of this procedure, I suggest using the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk. 2 - Start the machine and let it boot. If you boot with the Windows 98 disk, you'll be prompted to start with or without CD-ROM support. Choose Without, you don't need it at this point. If you boot with the MS-DOS disk, you'll be prompted to enter the date and time. Just press Enter twice. Either way, you'll end up at a DOS prompt. 3 - When you're at the A:\> prompt, remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5.01 (PM5) floppy disk. 4 - Type pqmagic and press Enter. Since you're running the program from the floppy disk, it will take about a minute or two to load, that's normal. This would be a great opportunity to go get some coffee. When the main screen appears, you'll see a graphical view of your hard drive as well as a more detailed table. If you're setting up your computer for the first time, the drive should be empty with no partitions available. The graphic should show a long gray bar with the description Unallocated in the table below it. 5 - If the drive has been used before and contains partitions, simply right-click on each displayed partition and select Delete. To confirm this step, you first need to type the letters OK, and then click the OK button. Please make sure that you are working with the right computer and hard drive because this operation will wipe out any information on the partitions you delete. Make A Battle Plan After removing all existing partitions and applying the changes, think about how you're going to lay out the drive. Ask these questions: - How many operating systems do I want to be able to boot? - How big is the drive? - What file system do I want to use for each operating system? The following table shows the partitions layout scheme that we will use. Table 1: Partitions Layout Scheme Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition 3 Partition 4 Operating System MS-DOS 6.22 Windows NT 4 Windows 98 Windows 2000 File System FAT NTFS4 FAT32 NTFS5 Partition Type Primary Primary Primary Primary Partition Size/MB 1,950 2,500 1,500 3,000 Order of Installation The order of installation is important. The first partition must be a primary FAT partition under 2 GigaBytes (GB). On this partition you will install MS-DOS 6.22, install System Commander (the software that makes this multi-boot environment possible), store any drive images of each operating system (OS) you'll create later, and install additional tools such as Drive Image and Partition Magic. That way everything is organized in one spot at the beginning of the drive. The reason for the odd size of 1,950 MegaBytes (MB) for the first partition, is that the second partition contains Windows NT 4, which needs to be installed in a partition that starts within the first 2 GB of the physical hard drive. If you installed NT 4 on a partition that starts after the first 2 GB of the physical drive, you could not boot into NT 4. Windows 98 (Win 98) and Windows 2000 (Win 2K) do not have this limitation and therefore can be installed pretty much anywhere on the drive. Choosing a File System Choosing a file system for each OS is as important as the order of installation because not every OS supports each file system. The following table explains what OS supports what file system. Table 2: File Systems Operating System Supported File Systems MS-DOS 6.22 FAT Windows 3.1 FAT Windows 95 and 95A FAT Windows 95B and 95C FAT, FAT32 Windows 98 and 98 Second Edition FAT, FAT32 Windows NT 4 FAT, NTFS4, NTFS5 (SP4 or higher only!) Windows 2000 FAT, FAT32, NTFS4, NTFS5 Table 3: Recommended File Systems Partition File System Choice(s) MS-DOS 6.22 FAT Windows NT 4 NTFS Windows 98 FAT32 Windows 2000 NTFS Table 3 shows our recommended file systems for each OS, but if you require a particular file system other than recommended, select as needed from the file systems available in Table 3. Our recommendation for MS-DOS partitions is FAT, which is the only choice you have. For your NT 4 partition, you want to choose NTFS because it is superior to FAT in many ways. For your Windows 98 partition, you want to choose FAT32 because it is more efficient than FAT. For your Windows 2000 partition, you want to choose NTFS because it is superior to FAT in many ways. If you're interested in more detail about the different Windows file systems and their pros and cons, go to: http://www.PCNineOneOne.com/howto/filesystems1.html Partition Type There are three different types of partitions: primary, extended, and logical. All Microsoft operating systems need to be installed into a primary partition because they require being in a bootable/active partition, and primary partitions are the only type of partition that can be set active and made bootable. Due to an old legacy limitation of the Master Boot Record (MBR), any physical hard drive can contain up to 4 primary partitions only, which limits the number of operating systems in Table 1's Partition Layout scheme to 4. Setting up partitions this way is essential to how System Commander, the software you'll use later to choose which OS to boot, makes multi-booting possible. Let's look at how the boot process normally works with only one operating system. Note: There are actually ways to boot Microsoft operating systems from a logical partition. The process is a little bit more involved though, and only recommended for the more advanced user. Since this article is geared towards users that are relatively new to multi-booting, we won't go into detail about this topic here. But you can read more about it here: http://home.wanadoo.nl/geurt/faqhow/faq.html#II When you turn on the PC, the BIOS runs its checks and then reads the first sector of the first hard drive, which contains the MBR. The MBR contains a table of the partitions of the drive and the initial boot program. This program knows on what partition to find the OS and how to boot it. (If you want to know all the details about this process, check this out: http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/BOOT/PARTITIO.HTM System Commander replaces the initial boot program by installing its own boot program. System Commander's boot program can then load the actual System Commander program and present you with a menu. System Commander's menu allows you to select from the installed OSs. When you select your OS to boot, System Commander sets active the primary partition on which the OS of choice is installed. Since only primary partitions can be set active and made bootable, any partition you might want to boot from needs to be a primary one. Another detail to remember is that Partition Magic, the tool we use to create all the primary partitions, hides all inactive (non-bootable) primary partitions. When those other partitions are hidden, they automatically become invisible to the OS you're booting. If you look at the available drives after booting your OS, you'll notice that only the partition you selected (plus any floppy and/or CD-ROM drives) show up but none of the other partitions with the other OSs on them. Our third partition type, extended partitions, is a container for logical partitions. If you want to create more than 4 partitions on your drive, one of the first four partitions you create must be an extended partition. Inside this extended partition you can then create up to 24 logical partitions. The limitation of 24 partitions comes from the fact that hard drive letters begin with C: and the alphabet contains 26 letters. Partition Size The first partition needs to be smaller than 2 GB (for the reasons explained earlier in "Order of Installation," that's why the 1,950 MB size was chosen). If you plan to install Windows NT 4, it needs to go into the second partition. To successfully install NT 4, you need to know about another limitation. The maximum size of a bootable partition to install NT 4 on is 7.8 GB again due to some legacy BIOS limitations of addressing hard drives by Cylinder/Head/Sector. Therefore be sure to keep the size of your NT 4 partition under 7.8 GB. If you want to get geeky, you can read the technical explanation of this limitation here: http://www.mcc.ac.uk/grub/grub_22.html Another limitation you should be aware of just in case you are thinking about using the FAT file system is that FAT (also known as FAT16) can only handle partitions up to 2 GB in size. If you're interested in the technical explanation of this limitation, check out this article: http://www.PCNineOneOne.com/howto/fat1.html The size of the Windows 98 and Windows 2000 partition is pretty much up to you as both file systems, FAT32 and NTFS5, support disk sizes of tons o' Gigs. The Table 1: Partition Layout Scheme example is for a 9 GB drive. If your drive is bigger or smaller, you probably want to adjust the partition sizes accordingly, as long as you keep the limitations explained earlier in mind. When you choose the size of your partition keep in mind that a Windows installation can take roughly between 100 and 700 MB, depending on the version and what options you choose. You also want to leave some room for the swap file and any applications you want to install, therefore you should make your partitions at least 1 GB/1,000MB or bigger. Fresh Installation - Step-By-Step Creating Your First Partition Now that you have a clean hard drive and a battle plan, it's time to get to work. First you need to use Partition Magic to create the necessary partitions on your blank hard drive. 1 - Boot to a DOS prompt using either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk as explained before. 2 - When you're at the A:\> prompt, type FDISK /MBR and press Enter. This will reset the Master Boot Record (MBR) in case there are any remnants from previous multi-boot installations. But run this command only when starting from scratch, don't use it on a machine with an existing multi-boot environment that you wish to keep, it would destroy any customizations of the MBR and break the multi-boot. 3 - Now remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5.01 (PM5) floppy disk, then type pqmagic and press Enter. When the main screen appears, your hard drive should be displayed as one solid block of unallocated space. Note: If you have only one physical hard drive in your machine, it will already be selected. If you have more than one drive, you need to make sure that the first drive is selected (which it normally is by default) by selecting it from the Disk drop-down list in the top left corner. 4 - First create the DOS partition, by right-clicking anywhere in the gray unallocated space and select Create. 5 - In the dialog box that displays, select Create as: Primary Partition, Partition Type: FAT, Label: MSDOS, and Size: 1950 MB, then click OK. 6 - In order to make this partition bootable, right-click on the new partition, select Advanced and click Set Active. 7 - Click the Apply button to actually perform the operation. You just created your first partition. 8 - When the operation is complete, click Exit to leave the program. 9 - Before you click OK to restart your machine, insert MS-DOS 6.22 Setup Disk 1. 10 - Click OK to reboot and start installing MS-DOS. The MS-DOS installation begins. Installing MS-DOS The DOS installation starts automatically after you reboot your machine with the DOS Setup Disk 1 inserted. 1 - Follow the instructions on the screen; they are pretty self- explanatory, and usually all the default options work just fine. 2 - Insert disks 2 and 3 as prompted. 3 - When the installation is finished you will be prompted to remove all disks and press Enter to reboot the machine in MS-DOS mode. Again a pretty easy process. The machine will reboot displaying a C:> prompt. Creating The NT Partition The machine should be rebooted now and sitting at a C:> prompt. 1 - Remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5 disk (again) and type a:pqmagic to start PM5. When the main screen appears, you'll see your DOS partition on the left, followed by the remainder of the drive as unallocated space. 2 - Right-click in the unallocated space and select Create. 3 - In the dialog box that displays, select Create as: Primary Partition, Partition Type: NTFS, Label: NT4, and Size: 2500 MB, then click OK. 4 - In order to make this partition bootable, right-click on the new partition, select Advanced and click Set Active. 5 - Now click the Apply button to actually perform the operation. You just created your NT partition. 6 - When the operation is complete, click Exit to leave the program. 7 - Before you click OK to restart your machine, insert NT 4 Setup Disk 1. 8 - Now click OK to reboot and start installing NT 4. Installing NT 4 The NT installation will start automatically when you reboot your machine with the NT 4 Setup Disk 1 inserted. Note: The general installation process for NT 4 Workstation and Server is almost identical. The following instructions apply to both installation processes. 1 - Follow the instructions in the NT 4 installation program. 2 - When the setup program asks you where to install NT, it will show a table of existing partitions. If you followed the instructions so far, you should see first a partition labeled Unknown, which is your DOS partition. The second partition should be labeled NTFS (the file system you chose for it) and NT4 (the label you gave it). 3 - Use the arrow keys to select and highlight the NT4 partition and press Enter to install NT into that partition. 4 - On the next screen, select the Format the partition using the NTFS file system option. NT 4 will do a fresh format of the partition and set up a nice clean NTFS file system. 5 - Continue to follow the instructions on the screen. Eventually the setup program will ask you to remove any floppy and press Enter to restart. Setup will reboot your machine and continue with a graphical interface. 6 - Reboot your machine as prompted. Setup asks you to let it reboot one more time after which you should end up at a regular login screen. 7 - Log in and take a few more minutes to complete and customize your NT installation. 8 - First, install your NT service pack of choice Warning! NT 4 SP 3 or earlier and Win2K CANNOT co-exist on the same system - period! The dangerous caveat with NT 4 and Win2K is that even though the file system they both use is NTFS, Win2K uses a newer version of NTFS (NTFS 5) that cannot be read by NT 4 SP 3 (Service Pack 3) or earlier (NTFS 4 only). If you install NT 4 with SP 3 or earlier on a machine that also has Win2K on it, the moment you start Win2K it will change the NTFS file system on the NT 4 partition and update it to NTFS 5. The next time you try to boot to NT 4 you'll end up with a nasty BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) with lots of gobbledygook and the message INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE. The simple reason is that only SP 4 and higher can "understand" WIN 2K's NTFS 5. There is no way to fix this once this happens! Therefore you always need to install SP 4 or higher on NT 4 if you plan to make it coexist with Win2K on the same machine! Even hiding the NT 4 partition from the Win2K partition with Partition Magic and/or System Commander won't work, so don't even think about it. NT 4 SP 3 or earlier and Win2K cannot co-exist on the same system - period! Tip: To execute an unattended service pack installation, go to Start / Run, type the path to the service pack followed by -u for unattended and click OK. The installation will complete automatically without prompting you for anything, including the reboot. For example, D:\NTServicePacks\NT4 _SP6\sp6_128.exe -u. 9 - If necessary, reboot when prompted. 10 - After the reboot, install the video driver if needed. Tip: To find out what video card is in your computer, go to Start / Run, type Command and click OK. In the window that displays, type debug at the prompt and press Enter. At the dash prompt, type dc000:35 and press Enter. Look at the rightmost column. There is a lot of gobbledygook, but somewhere in there you'll see a worded description for your video card. For example, if it shows G200, you probably have a Matrox Millennium G200. If it shows nVIDIA TNT, chances are you have a card with the nVIDIA Riva TNT chip set and need to install the Detonator drivers. Type q and press Enter to exit the debug utility. 11 - After installing the correct driver and the mandatory reboot, go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings and select the color, resolution and refresh rate you want. 12 - After making your selection click the Test button to see if your display can handle it. 13 - If you see the test pattern, wait until it returns to the regular screen, answer Yes to the prompt, then click Apply to make the actual change. If you selected invalid settings and your screen becomes garbled after pressing the Test button, just wait 5 seconds until the screen automatically returns to its previous stage. That's it! You successfully installed and configured NT 4. Now on to the Windows 98 installation! Creating The Windows 98 Partition 1 - Insert either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive and reboot the machine so that you end up at a DOS prompt. 2 - Insert the Partition Magic 5 disk again and type a:pqmagic to start PM5. When the main screen appears, you'll see your DOS/FAT partition on the left, followed by the NT/NTFS partition, followed by the remainder of the drive as unallocated space. 3 - Right-click in the unallocated space and select Create. 4 - In the dialog box that displays, select Create as: Primary Partition, Partition Type: FAT32, Label: WIN98, and Size: 1500 MB, then click OK. 5 - In order to make this partition bootable, right-click on the new partition, select Advanced and click Set Active. 6 - Right-click on the new partition once more and select Format. 7 - In the dialog box that displays, select Partition Type: FAT32, confirm that the label already reads WIN98, type OK as instructed, and click OK. 8 - Click the Apply button to perform the operation. 9 - When the process is completed, click OK. 10 - Before you click to reboot, insert your Windows 98 Boot Disk. 11 - Click OK to reboot the machine. The machine will reboot from the Windows 98 disk and load the CD-ROM drivers needed for the Windows 98 installation. It will then get you to a C:\ prompt. You're now ready to install Windows 98. Installing Windows 98 1 - Insert the Windows 98 installation disk 2 - Switch to the CD-ROM drive by typing E:\ and pressing Enter. 3 - Go to the appropriate directory on the CD by typing cd win98 and press Enter. Your prompt should now look like this: E:\WIN98> Tip: For Windows 9x/ME we'll make things a little easier and faster by copying the setup files to the hard drive first and running setup from there. It speeds up the installation, makes it more reliable, and saves you the trouble of having to insert the installation CD in the future anytime you want to make any changes to your Windows installation. 4 - First we need to create a place for the setup files on the hard drive by typing md C:\setup and pressing Enter. Then copy the setup files into this new directory by typing copy *.* c:\setup and pressing Enter. This process should only take a couple of minutes. 5 - To start the actual installation, type c:\setup\setup and press Enter. Follow the instructions, they are pretty self-explanatory. 6 - After the desktop is up, install the video driver if needed. Tip: To find out what video card is in your computer, go to Start / Run, type Command and click OK. In the window that displays, type debug at the prompt and press Enter. At the dash prompt, type dc000:35 and press Enter. Look at the rightmost column. There is a lot of gobbledygook, but somewhere in there you'll see a worded description for your video card. For example, if it shows G200, you probably have a Matrox Millennium G200. If it shows nVIDIA TNT, chances are you have a card with the nVIDIA Riva TNT chip set and need to install the Detonator drivers. Type q and press Enter to exit the debug utility. 7 - After installing the correct driver and rebooting the machine, go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings and select the color, resolution and refresh rate you want. Creating the Windows 2000 Partition 1 - Insert either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive and reboot the machine so that you end up at a DOS prompt. 2 - Remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5 disk and type a:pqmagic to start PM5. When the main screen appears, you'll see your DOS/FAT partition on the left, followed by the NT/NTFS partition, followed by the Windows 98/FAT32 partition, followed by the remainder of the drive as unallocated space. 3 - Right-click in the unallocated space and select Create. 4 - In the dialog box that displays, select Create as: Primary Partition, Partition Type: NTFS, Label: WIN2K, and Size: 3000 MB, then click OK. 5 - In order to make this partition bootable, right-click on the new partition, select Advanced and click Set Active. 6 - Right-click on the new partition once more and select Format. 7 - In the dialog box that displays, select Partition Type: NTFS, confirm the label already reads WIN2K, type OK as instructed, and click OK. 8 - Click the Apply button to perform the operation. 9 - When the process completes and you click OK, you'll be prompted to reboot. 10 - Before you reboot, insert your Windows 2000 Pro Setup Disk 1 first. 11 - Click OK and reboot the machine. The machine will boot from the Windows 2000 disk and start the installation process. Installing Windows 2000 1 - Insert the remaining setup disks (4 total) as prompted and follow the instructions on the screen. 2 - After the installation is finished and the desktop is up, install the video driver if needed. Tip: To find out what video card is in your computer, go to Start / Run, type Command and click OK. In the window that displays, type debug at the prompt and press Enter. At the dash prompt, type dc000:35 and press Enter. Look at the rightmost column. There is a lot of gobbledygook, but somewhere in there you'll see a worded description for your video card. For example, if it shows G200, you probably have a Matrox Millennium G200. If it shows nVIDIA TNT, chances are you have a card with the nVIDIA Riva TNT chip set and need to install the Detonator drivers. Type q and press Enter to exit the debug utility. 3 - After installing the correct driver and the mandatory reboot, go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings and select the color, resolution and refresh rate you want. Installing System Commander Now that all the operating systems are installed, you're almost finished. The next step is to set up the dual-boot menu so that you can choose which OS to boot. The program that enables dual-boot is called System Commander. It needs to be installed on the MS-DOS partition. In order to install System Commander on the MS-DOS partition, we first need to make the MS-DOS partition active so that we can boot to it. 1 - Insert the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive and reboot the machine so that you end up at a DOS prompt. 2 - Remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5 disk. 3 - Type a:pqmagic to start PM5. When the main screen appears, you'll see your DOS/FAT partition on the left, followed by the NT/NTFS partition, followed by the Win98/FAT32 partition, followed by the Win2K/NTFS partition. 4 - To set the MS-DOS partition active again, right-click the DOS/FAT partition on the left, select Advanced and click Set Active. 5 - Click the Apply button to actually make the change, then remove the floppy disk from the drive and click OK as prompted to reboot the system. If everything went well, the system should automatically boot into DOS and dump you out at a C:\ prompt. 6 - Insert your Windows 98 Boot Disk and reboot the system. Make sure that you boot with CD-ROM support. 7 - When you're back at a DOS prompt, insert the System Commander Installation Disk into your CD-ROM drive. Before you can start the installation, you need to know which drive letter was assigned to your CD-ROM drive. Look at the last lines on your monitor before the DOS prompt. The drive letter for your CD-ROM drive should be displayed there. Depending on what type of Windows 98 Boot Disk you used, it will be either D:\ or E:\ - for this example, let's assume the CD-ROM drive is D:\. 8 - Type D: and press Enter. This should change the DOS prompt to D:\>. 9 - Type cd install and press Enter. This should change the DOS prompt to D:\Install>. 10 - Type scin install and press Enter. This should start the System Commander Installation program. 11 - Follow the instructions on the screen as they are pretty self- explanatory. 12 - When prompted about boot disks, select Yes, I have a boot diskette. 13 - Accept the default installation path of C:\SC. Skip making the utility disks for now. 14 - Exit from the main menu when the installation is complete. 15 - Remove the installation CD and the floppy disk from the drive and reboot the system. You'll get some info from System Commander, press a key to continue, you won't see this screen again. 16 - If everything went well, you should now see a menu with the following options: A - MS-DOS 6.22 B - WindowsNT4 C - Windows98SE D - Windows2000 E - Boot from drive A: If option B reads Windows 2000, it means that System Commander picked up NT4 as Win2K, since Win2K saw the NTFS file system on the NT4 partition during installation (even though Partition Magic 5 supposedly hid it) and upgraded it to NTFS5. (It doesn't mean that you have two Win2K installations or lost your Windows NT4 installation. NT4 is still there.) 17 - If option B reads Windows 2000, change the description of option by highlighting option B, then pressing Alt-S on your keyboard (hold down the Alt key and press the key for the letter S) to get to the setup menu. 18 - Select Description and Icon menu, then manually change the description to WindowsNT4. 19 - Press Esc until you're back to the main menu. The change should already be visible. Understanding How System Commander Works You now have four primary partitions on your hard drive, each one containing a different operating system. In order to boot from any OS, the partition it is on must be primary (for Windows OS) and set to active. However, you can only have one partition set active at a time. Here's why. When you boot your machine and the initial POST (Power On Self Test) is done, the BIOS will look for the Master Boot Record (MBR), which is usually located in the first sector of the physical hard drive. This sector contains the partition table information, e.g. how many partitions there are, their size, which one is active, etc. It also contains a small program that is loaded to continue the boot process. It checks the primary active partition and loads the boot sector for that partition (the first sector of that partition), which contains the boot code specific to that operating system. As you can see, if there were multiple primary active partitions, this could never work, as it would confuse the boot code in the MBR. To boot from different operating systems, you would have to use Partition Magic each time to set another partition active - very annoying. This is where a boot manager program like System Commander (SC) comes in. SC is installed into its own primary active partition (the DOS partition we created first) and modifies the MBR to make sure that when the system is turned on, it always loads SC first. During installation, SC also searches all partitions and identifies by the information in the boot sector of each partition what OS is installed and bootable on it. That's how you get the boot menu every time. Once you make your selection, SC will then take the selected primary partition, set it active, hide the unneeded partitions, and proceed to boot the selected OS. Warning! As explained before, SC modifies the MBR to ensure that SC is always loaded on bootup. However, if you run the command fdisk /mbr from DOS it replaces the custom MBR boot code with a default/generic one and it breaks the boot menu. If this ever happens to you, it is easily fixable. Boot with your MS-DOS Boot Disk. Once you're at the DOS prompt, type C: and press Enter, then type cd sc and press Enter. Now type scin and press Enter. This will start System Commander. Select Enable/Update System Commander from the menu, then choose Enable System Commander from the next menu. This will restore the System Commander setup including the custom MBR. Exit and reboot. Customizing System Commander After installing System Commander (SC) and rebooting, it pretty much configures itself and works fine right away. But you can customize it bit to accommodate your needs better. You always start at the main SC screen with the OS Selection Menu. Here you press Alt-S on your keyboard (hold down the Alt key and press the key for the letter S) to get to the setup menu. System Commander offers the following menus/options: Timeouts and default OS lets you choose the option to time out and boot automatically to a default OS, how long to wait and what the default OS is, choose a custom alert sound, and set a screen saver. This is a matter of personal preference. Global Special Options contains some advanced custom options that normally don't need to be changed. Local Special Options has one important option, Primary partitions visible on drive x. This option is tied to the OS that was highlighted in the main menu when you entered the setup menu. This option lets you choose which other partitions besides the one the OS selection boots to will be visible at that time. For safest operation and the least chance of confusion, I recommend hiding all other partitions and making only the currently booted partition visible for each version of Windows. For the MS-DOS option you need to display all partitions, otherwise the multi-boot wouldn't work. This table shows our recommendation for this option. OS\Partitions Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition 3 Partition 4 MS-DOS Windows NT4 Windows 98 Windows 2000 MS-DOS 6.22 Visible Visible Visible Visible Windows NT 4 Hidden Visible Hidden Hidden Windows 98 Hidden Hidden Visible Hidden Windows 2000 Hidden Hidden Hidden Visible The first row means that all partitions must be visible to DOS since that's where System Commander is installed (and System Commander needs to be able to see all the options). The second row means that the only partition visible when you boot to NT 4 will be the NT 4 partition, nothing else etc. 4 - Password control allows you to password-protect System Commander. Normally this is not required; only use it if you have a good reason. 5 - File management is only used when you install multiple OSs into your FAT partition. It doesn't apply to us here. 6 - Order, add, and removal lets you change the order of choices on your multi-boot menu as well as add and remove items. 7 - Description and icon allows you to customize (to a certain extent) the descriptions and icons for each multi-boot menu choice. While it's great to have these options, System Commander works pretty well with the default options and setups. 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. Adding An Operating System To Your Collection Here's how to install a new OS or replace an existing one into one of your multi-boot partitions. In order to reliably and easily add/replace an OS to your collection, you need to temporarily make the partition where you want to install it the only visible and active partition. 1 - Insert either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive and reboot the machine. You end up at a DOS prompt. 2 - Insert the Partition Magic 5 disk and type a:pqmagic to start PM5. The main screen shows all your partitions. 3 - Identify and delete the partition where the new OS goes so that you have a clean slate to start with. Right-click on the partition and select Delete. 4 - Type OK and click OK. After the partition is deleted you'll have a chunk of free, unallocated space. 5 - Right-click in the unallocated space and select Create. 6 - In the dialog box that displays, select Create as: Primary Partition. 7 - For the partition type, refer to the table below for the best file system to choose. Operating System Supported File Systems MS-DOS 6.22 FAT Windows 3.1 FAT Windows 95 and 95A FAT Windows 95B and 95C FAT, FAT32 Windows 98 and 98 Second Edition FAT, FAT32 Windows NT 4 FAT, NTFS4, NTFS5 (SP4 or higher only!) Windows 2000 FAT, FAT32, NTFS4, NTFS5 8 - For the Label, you could use for example Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Win2K. Then click OK. 9 - In order to make this partition bootable, right-click on the new partition, select Advanced and click Set Active. 10 - Right-click on the new partition once more and select Format. 11 - In the dialog box that displays, select the partition type according to your selection as explained above, confirm that the label is correct, type OK as instructed, and click OK. Look at the Status column. You'll notice that all other partitions are set automatically to Hidden by PM5, which is exactly what we want. This way we pretend that our new OS partition is the only existing partition on the drive to avoid any confusion with the multi-boot setup during installation. 12 - Now click the Apply button to perform the operation. 13 - When the process is done and you click OK, you'll be prompted to reboot. 14 - Before you click to reboot, insert your Windows 98 or MS-DOS Boot Disk first! 15 - Now click OK to reboot and get to a C:\ prompt. 16 - The last required step is to type a:\fdisk /mbr and press Enter. This resets the Master Boot Record to prevent System Commander from taking over after the next reboot. Now you're ready to start the OS installation. To install Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000: 1 - Insert the first setup disk for that operating system. 2 - Reboot the machine. Installation will start automatically. To install Windows 95, 98 or Millennium Edition: 1 - Insert the Windows 98 Boot Disk with CD-ROM support and reboot your machine. 2 - When you're at the DOS prompt, insert the Windows 95, 98, or ME installation disk. 3 - Switch to the CD-ROM drive by typing E:\ and pressing Enter. 4 - Go to the appropriate directory on the CD by typing cd win98 (for example, if you want to install Windows 98) and press Enter. Your prompt should now look like this: E:\WIN98> Tip: For Windows 9x/ME we'll make things a little easier and faster by copying the setup files to the hard drive first and running setup from there. It speeds up the installation, makes it more reliable, and saves you the trouble from having to insert the installation CD in the future anytime you want to make any changes to your Windows installation. 5 - Create a place for the setup files on the hard drive by typing mkdir C:\setup and pressing Enter. 6 - Copy the setup files into this new directory by typing copy *.* c: \setup and pressing Enter. This process should only take a couple of minutes. 7 - Start the actual installation by typing c:\setup\setup and pressing Enter. 8 - Follow the instructions, they are pretty self-explanatory. For more specific help with installing the OS refer to "Fresh Installation - Step-By-Step" earlier in this guide. It contains a section for installation of each Windows OS. After the installation is successfully completed, you want to make this OS a part of your multi-boot setup and get your multi-boot menu back when you boot. Here's how. 1 - Insert either the MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk or the Windows 98 Boot Disk into the floppy drive and reboot the machine. You end up at a DOS prompt. 2 - Remove the boot disk and insert the Partition Magic 5 disk, then type a:pqmagic to start PM5. You'll see the main screen showing all your partitions. 3 - Right-click on your MS-DOS partition and select Advanced, then Set Active. 4 - Click Apply to apply the changes, remove any disk from the floppy drive, and then reboot. You'll end up at the DOS prompt. Right above the prompt you should see a message from System Commander about Reloading System Commander MBR. System Commander is actually smart enough to recognize that the Master Boot record was changed and restores its own custom version automatically - very handy! 5 - Reboot one more time, and your multi-boot system should be back, displaying the new OS as an option in the menu. 6 - Ensure that you make a drive image of your new OS installation (next)! Drive Imaging (DI) Made Easy To save ourselves the hassle of having to clean-install an OS every time you need a fresh installation or need to test different setups of the same OS, we use a program called Drive Image from PowerQuest. It gives you the ability to create a snapshot of a partition or hard drive by saving it in a compressed format on another drive or partition for easy restoration. Installing an OS from scratch can take anywhere between 1 and 3 hours, depending on the OS and the speed of your machine. Restoring a drive image usually takes between 5 and 15 minutes for a partition with a basic OS install on it. Big difference, isn't it? Below you'll find instructions on how to perform the most important operations of DI - creating and restoring images. If you are interested in learning more about its capabilities, please consult the manual for more information. Creating Drive Images Before you even think about creating the actual image, you should take a few minutes right now to verify the OS installation to make sure it is customized exactly the way you want it, has all the necessary drivers and service packs installed, etc. By taking the time beforehand you'll save yourself the annoyance of having to fix the same little annoyances every time you restore the image. Following is a list of things to check before creating your image. Drivers - Ensure you have all the appropriate drivers installed, e.g. video, sound, modem. Service Packs - Ensure you have the appropriate service pack installed. Modem - Ensure you can access the Internet. If you have problems, verify that the modem driver is installed and working and that your dial-up connection is set up correctly. Customizations - Ensure you tweaked everything you wanted or needed, e.g. screen resolution and color, Explorer view style, etc. But don't install customization software such as custom screen savers or TweakUI or X-Setup because you don't want to compromise the integrity of the clean OS install. When you're satisfied with the setup, it's time to make the image. 1 - Shut down Windows and reboot the system. 2 - Select MS-DOS 6.22 from the System Commander boot menu to boot to DOS. 3 - When you're at the C:\ prompt, type pqdi to start Drive Image. 4 - From the Drive Image menu, select Create Image. This starts a wizard that guides you through the process. On the next screen you'll see a graphical layout of your hard drive as well as a table-style view. This looks similar to the Partition Magic screen you got when you created your partitions earlier. Drive Image is made by the same people as Partition Magic. Anyway - you'll see your partitions lined up. You should be able to easily identify which OS resides on which partition by the file system and the volume label. 5 - To select the name of the partition that contains the OS you want to make an image of, click its check box. I strongly advise against including multiple partitions in one image for several reasons (even though you'll have the option to do it): the most important reason is that it takes a lot longer to create and restore the image, because if the image file ends up getting corrupted or deleted somehow you lose more than one OS. It also makes it a lot harder to keep track of your image library. 6 - After selecting the desired partition, click Next. 7 - In the next window, first click the Browse button because you need to choose a location in which to store your image file. 8 - Use the drop-down menu labeled Drives to select the C: drive. Now you should see a list of folders in the box labeled Folders. One of the folders listed there is called IMAGES (where you store your images). 9 - Double-click the folder labeled IMAGES. 10 - Provide a name for the image file and type it in the File Name field. It is imperative that you use a naming scheme that makes sense to you and makes it easy to recognize three months down the road what you stored in this image file. Do not call it Windows; be organized and logical. For example, if you are imaging a Windows NT 4 partition that was patched with Service Pack 6, you could name the image file NT4SP6. Chances are you will easily recognize it in the distant future. 11 - Click OK. This will return you to the previous screen. In the Image File field you should now see something like C:\IMAGES\NT4SP6.PQI. Do NOT click Next yet! 12 - Click your cursor in the Image File Comments field. This field is invaluable; it is where you will record details and notes about the partition you're imaging. You can type up to 300 characters in this field. Here's an example of a good Image File Comment: Windows NT 4 Service Pack 6 Created April 42nd 2025 Created on PIII 500 desktop Installed Drivers: NVidia Detonator 3 Intel Etherexpress Pro 2.57 That is only 145 characters including spaces; all full of important information. When you are about to restore an image in the future, you can check out these comments with Drive Image before the actual restoration process and find out exactly what this image is all about. 13 - Click Next to continue. Now you need to choose a compression level. Drive Image can compress the information to make the image file as small as possible. I suggest selecting High compression, it offers a 50% compression ratio, meaning the image file will take up half the space of the actual data on the partition you're imaging. For example, if you installed Windows 98 and it took up 200 MB of disk space on the partition, you can expect the image file to be around 100 MB in size. Since the DOS partition where you're saving your image is almost 2 GB, you'll have room for quite a number of image files. 14 - Select High compression and click Next. Now you'll see a summary for the image file creation process you're about to start. 15 - Click the Advanced button. Here you'll find several useful options: Check for File System Errors checks the drive for bad sectors. Leave it selected (checked). Disable SmartSector Copying means that instead of just copying the part of the partition that contains data, it will copy both used and unused sectors. Leave it unselected. Disk Writes will verify the data after writing the image file and make sure it's readable. This adds extraneous time to the image creation process. Leave it unchecked. Password Protect Image File is another nice, but usually unnecessary, option. Leave it unselected. Split Image File Into Multiple Files is also not needed in our case. This option is only applicable if you are planning to burn the image file onto CD-ROM afterwards and need to ensure that it does not exceed the storage capacity of a CD-R. Leave it unchecked. 16 - Click OK to return to the wizard. 17 - Click Finish to start the process of creating the drive image. 18 - When it's done, click OK and Exit. You're finished. Restoring Drive Images 1 - Reboot the system. 2 - Select MS-DOS 6.22 from the System Commander boot menu to boot to DOS. 3 - When you're at the C:\ prompt, type pqdi to start Drive Image. 4 - From the Drive Image menu, select Restore Image. This will start a wizard that will guide you through the process. 5 - Click the Browse button to locate the image file to restore. 6 - Use the Drives drop-down menu to select the C: drive. Now you should see a list of folders in the box labeled Folders. One of the folders listed there is called IMAGES. 7 - Double-click the folder called IMAGES (where your images should be located). In the box underneath the File Name field you will see a list of all available image files. 8 - To identify the image file you want to restore, click once on one of the image files and view the Image File Comments box below. You'll be able to view the comments for each image and easily identify the image you want to restore. 9 - Click the desired image file and click OK to return to the wizard, then click Next. Now you need to choose the partition to which to restore the image. 10 - Select the appropriate partition in the layout and click Next. If you restore the image to a partition that contains an OS, you'll get a warning message that whatever partition you selected as the restoration target will be erased, resulting in loss of all the data. Therefore ensure that you select the right partition, otherwise you might end up restoring more images than you originally planned. 11 - Click OK. Now you'll choose between two options: Fast Mode and Safe Mode. Fast mode restores the image quickly, but without any error checking; Safe Mode takes longer, but gives you the error checking option to look for bad sectors and verify disk writes to ensure that the image is being written correctly. 12 - Select the default, Fast Mode. If you get an error or if it doesn't seem to work, you can always give it another shot in Safe Mode. 13 - Click Next to continue. You'll see a summary of the operation you're about to perform. 14 - Click the Advanced button. You'll get some of the same options that you saw in the "Creating Drive Images" section, i.e, check for file system errors, skip bad sector check, and verify disk writes. Leave the last option unselected; it lets you hide the partition after restoring it, which doesn't apply in our situation because you want to be able to boot from the partition when you're done. 15 - Click OK. 16 - Now click Finish to restore the partition. 17 - When the process is finished, click OK and Exit. Partition Magic Partition Magic can be an invaluable tool because it allows you to manipulate partitions in many ways without losing data. With this tool you can move, resize, hide, format, create, delete partitions and more (carefully!). In this guide some of the functions and capabilities of PM5 are explained in the appropriate context. Explaining all the options of PM5 is impossible, but if you're interested in learning more about them, please consult the manual for more information. Troubleshooting This section provides a summary of important information, rules to remember, tips to make computer management easier, and a few troubleshooting hints in case you get stuck somewhere. "The screen looks like crap!" Depending on the type of video card in your test box, Windows might not identify it correctly and only install the standard VGA drivers. You might need drivers specific to your card. Go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings and take a look at the display setup. If it doesn't have the correct driver installed, install them. "I don't know what type of video card I have!" There is an easy way to find out. Go to Start / Run, type Command and click OK. In the window that displays, type debug at the prompt and press Enter. At the dash prompt, type dc000:35 and press Enter. Now look at the rightmost column; it contains a lot of gobbledygook, but somewhere in there you'll see the description for your video card. For example, if it shows G200, you probably have a Matrox Millennium G200. If it shows nVIDIA TNT, chances are you have a card with the nVIDIA Riva TNT chip set and want to install the Detonator drivers. Type q and press Enter to exit the debug utility. "The multi-boot menu doesn't come up anymore!" If the system does not display the System Commander multi-boot menu anymore and instead boots straight into an operating system, or throws up a nasty error message, most likely your Master Boot Record got hosed. Don't worry, everything is still there and this is easy to fix. Reboot using your MS-DOS Boot Disk. At the DOS prompt, type C: and press Enter, then type cd sc and press Enter. Now type scin and press Enter. This will start System Commander. Select Enable/Update System Commander from the menu, then choose Enable System Commander from the next menu. This will restore the System Commander setup including the custom MBR. Exit and reboot. "I forgot what this image file contains!" If you provided comments when you created the image, you will be able to read your description of the image in the Image Comment Field using the instructions in the next paragraph. If not, the only way to find out is to restore and view the image. Start Drive Image. From the Drive Image menu, select Restore Image. This will start a wizard. Click the Browse button to locate the image file to restore. From the dialog box, click the drop-down menu labeled Drives to select the C: drive. Now you should see a list of folders in the box labeled Folders. One of the folders listed there is called IMAGES. Double- click this folder (your image folder). In the box underneath the File Name field you will see a list of all available image files. Click an image file and view the Image File Comments box below. You'll be able to view the comments for each image and easily identify the image you're looking for. Select the desired image file and click OK to restore it. "I can't run Drive Image/Partition Magic from a DOS prompt!" If you type pqdi or pqmagic at the C:\ prompt and get an error like Bad Command or File Name, check the following. Make sure that those programs are actually installed. Look for the folders PQDI and PQMAGIC on your C:\ drive and see if they exist and contain files. Second, check the path statement in your Autoexec.bat. Type edit c: \autoexec.bat and press Enter. In the window that displays, look for a line that starts with the word PATH. It should include the paths C:\PQDI and C:\PQMAGIC and look like this: PATH C:\DOS;C:\PQDI;C:\PQMAGIC If the paths for Drive Image and/or Partition Magic are missing, edit the line as shown above, save, and exit and reboot. "My CD-ROM drive doesn't work when I'm in DOS!" To get CD-ROM access in DOS, boot your system with the Windows 98 Boot Disk with CD-ROM support. You have to do this because the driver needs to be specifically loaded. "My mouse doesn't work in Partition Magic/Drive Image!" Is your mouse plugged into the correct port on the back of your system? PQMagic and PQDI load a generic mouse driver when starting the program. However, it can happen that the mouse is not being detected correctly, leaving you without mouse support. This usually happens when you use a PS/2 mouse and a PS/2 to serial adapter to plug it into an older PC with serial ports only. But this is not a problem. Both programs can be operated completely by keyboard control, a pointing device is not required. Use the cursor keys and the Alt-key combinations to get around. "I get errors with cryptic numbers when I run PQDI/PQMagic!" Numbered errors mean that something went haywire during the operation but it doesn't have to be fatal or destructive. The first step is to write down the error, number, and details, go to PowerQuest's support site - http://www.partitionmagic.com/support/index.html -, and perform a search. Chances are you'll find the explanation and solution to the error right there. "I can't boot into NT 4 at all!" Use Partition Magic to see where on the hard drive you installed NT 4. NT 4 has some strange limitations. It needs to be installed in a partition that starts within the first 2 GB of the physical hard drive. If you installed NT 4 on a partition that starts after the first 2 GB of the physical drive, you could not boot into NT 4. Windows 98 and Windows 2000 do not have this limitation and therefore can be installed pretty much anywhere on the drive. "Suddenly my NT 4 partition won't boot anymore!" NT 4 SP 3 or earlier and Win2K CANNOT co-exist on the same system - period! The dangerous caveat with NT 4 and Win2K is that even though the file system they both use is NTFS, Win2K uses a newer version of NTFS (NTFS 5) that cannot be read by NT 4 SP 3 (Service Pack 3) or earlier (NTFS 4 only). If you install NT 4 with SP 3 or earlier on a machine that also has Win2K on it, the moment you start Win2K it will change the NTFS file system on the NT 4 partition and update it to NTFS 5. The next time you try to boot to NT 4 you'll end up with a nasty BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) with lots of gobbledygook and the message INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE. The simple reason is that only SP 4 and higher can "understand" WIN 2K's NTFS 5. There is no way to fix this once this happens! Therefore you always need to install SP 4 or higher on NT 4 if you plan to make it coexist with Win2K on the same machine! Even hiding the NT 4 partition from the Win2K partition with Partition Magic and/or System Commander won't work, so don't even think about it. NT 4 SP 3 or earlier and Win2K cannot co-exist on the same system - period! "Why can't I install more operating systems? My hard drive has plenty of space!" Any physical hard drive can contain only up to 4 primary partitions, which limits your number of operating systems to 4. All Microsoft operating systems need to be installed into a primary partition because they require being in a bootable/active partition, and primary partitions are the only type of partition that can be set active and made bootable. Due to an old legacy limitation of the Master Boot Record (MBR), any physical hard drive can contain only up to 4 primary partitions, which limits the number of operating system in our example to 4. "I can't create/resize a FAT partition over 2 GB!" It only supports partition sizes up to 2 GB; that is a limitation of the FAT file system. "What file system can I use with what operating system?" It's important that you format each partition with the right file system for the OS you're planning to install since not every OS supports every file system. The table below details what is possible. Operating System Supported File Systems MS-DOS 6.22 FAT Windows 3.1 FAT Windows 95 and 95A FAT Windows 95B and 95C FAT, FAT32 Windows 98 and 98 Second Edition FAT, FAT32 Windows NT 4 FAT, NTFS4, NTFS5 (SP4 or higher only!) Windows 2000 FAT, FAT32, NTFS4, NTFS5 "I just realized I made an error while working in Partition Magic. Where's the Undo button?" Don't worry, changes are not made until you click the Apply button. You can always go back to your original state by clicking General / Discard Changes (when you made a mistake and haven't clicked the Apply button yet). "How do I get USB support in Windows 95?" USB support depends on what version of Windows 95 you're using. Windows 95 (the original, build 950) and Windows 95a do not offer USB support at all. Starting with Windows 95b, Microsoft provided a USB supplement that you can install in Windows 95b or 95c to get USB functionality. This USB supplement installation file can be found on the Windows 95 installation disk in the folder \Other\USB. Open up that folder and run the file USBSUPP.EXE from within Windows 95b or 95c. After the installation and reboot go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / System / Device Manager. If you see a category labeled Universal serial bus controller, you have USB support. If you see a category labeled Other devices instead, click the plus symbol (+) to the left of the category to expand it, then highlight the entry for USB and click Remove. This removes it from the device manager. Click Refresh. Windows should redetect the USB bus and start installing the driver for it. If it comes up with a message about a file not being found, point it to the C:\Windows\System directory. It should find the file and then install the USB controller properly. Keep in mind that USB support in Windows 95b or 95c is flaky at best. For reliable USB support, you should use only Windows 98/98SE, Windows ME, or Windows 2000. http://www.PCNineOneOne.com