Installing 3 MS OS on one hard drive

[PC User]

Hi,

I have a 500 gig sata HD.

I installed XP Pro 32 bit.(was told XP install first was best)

Used a partitioning freeware Gparted to create a partition (about 50/50 on the HD).

I then installed Win 7, 64 bit on the other partition, so both are on the same hard drive.

At this stage at boot up I had the option of Win 7 or earlier version.

I made an image of my brand new XP Pro 32 bit installation (on about a 230 gig partition)

It was about 3.3gig or something like that and I copied it to an external hard drive.

I then used Win7 to shrink the XP partition by 13 gig, leaving me space to create another partition.

That was the max space Win 7 offered me and that is fine for an XP installation.

I copied the XP image into the 13 gig partition using Paragon. Its about 7 Gig uncompressed into

the 13 gig partition.

At boot up now, I see the option to boot up with Win7 or earlier version still.

There is no 3rd option,

and if I go into the earlier version option I dont get two options, (would have been nice)

it just boots into my first installation of XP Pro 32 bit.

1. Is it possible to get 3 MS OS showing at the MS boot up screen?

2. Does MS OS have to be INSTALLED rather than just image copied into a partition?

3. Is it possible to get this second XP "seen" at boot up?

Any help would be great.

[casey]

I managed to achieve this by editing the 1st XP boot.ini to -

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="2nd XP" /fastdetect

You could try this at your own risk.

[PC User]

Thanks,

I can see that this is showing a potential boot for 2 XP installations.

However Im wanting to install 3 MS OS.

2 x XPs and 1 Win7 (all on one HD)

Can I simply create a 3rd line with minor changes, such as...

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Win7" /fastdetect

While Im here, the text shown, can that be anything that you type

and that is what shows up in the boot screen? Or does it have to

be specific text.

Thanks

[PC User]

Got it,

This worked, I get the option at boot up to select Win 7 or Earlier Versions

Once I select the "earlier versions" option I am presented with the 2 XPs on my hard drive.

Thank you

[casey]

Only too happy to help. Not often I Manage to.