Dual Booting

Dual Booting: How to run multiple operating systems

Product: Partition Magic (versions 7.0, 5.0 and 4.0 tested)
From: PowerQuest
Price: upgrades US$30
Pros: Graphical boot manager and complete partition management software, including on-the-fly resizing of partitions. Simplified "wizard" configuration options from those in v4.0. Native Windows 95/98, NT  and DOS executables. Windows 95 OSR2 and Win98 users will find its support for converting drives to or from FAT32 a plus. HPFS, NTFS and Linux EXT2 partitions are also supported. Linux users will appreciate the new version's improved support for that OS. V5 fixed some bugs in the 4.0 release and its documentation.
Cons: Versions since 4.0 have moved away from some of the features that made previous releases OS/2 friendly. Some operations can cause boot sectors (LILO, etc.) to become non-functional. Limited support for NTFS.

If you type the keywords "partition magic" into just about any search engine, you'll probably find a lot of nice things being said about this utility. However, we encountered some problems with v4.0 that you probably haven't heard about. For starters, the documentation supplied with the program is wrong when it states (on page 120) that the CD includes a DOS-mode program that can be run from the CD. PowerQuest's beleaguered tech support line (we waited almost 20 minutes to get through to a technician) confirms that this is indeed an error. Surprisingly, neither the online support database nor the frequently asked questions list of common problems on the company's website supply an answer to this problem, either; the former refers DOS-only users to "contact technical support." No wonder they get so many calls.

At any rate, once they divulged the answer (buried in the OS2INST directory are two disk images that must be copied to the hard drive and run to create the required DOS-mode PQMAGICT.EXE file that, despite its location, isn't an OS/2 file at all), we were up and running.

As mentioned above, OS/2 support is worse in this release. No longer is there an OS/2 native executable; OS/2 users must now run an emulated Windows environment to set up their partitions.

A quick check on various Usenet newsgroups also revealed that there were numerous bugs in the 4.0 release. We certainly noticed a few anomalies. For example, the installer failed with a "Can't create TEMP file" error when run on a system with a freshly installed copy of Win98. Rebooting solved the problem. As well, the BootMagic utility was unable to work with a DOS-formatted boot floppy prepared on a Macintosh (an obscure situation, we'll admit!). PowerQuest subsequently shipped a 4.01 update, and then followed it up with version 5.0 -- a better release overall.

Partition Magic's wizard help address the system's limit of four primary partitions by advising you, for example, that Linux, Windows NT/2000 and certain other operating systems can be installed to a logical partition -- thereby preserving primary partitions for Windows 9x and its ilk. Thus, a multi-boot system might be set up with a primary partition for Windows and a pair of primary partitions for Linux or another OS. That's the way we set up our Windows 98/Linux system. In this regard, Partition Magic offers the shortest route to multi-OS satisfaction.

Tip: Need to restore a damaged MBR (Master Boot Record)?
Use the following line at a dos prompt:

fdisk /mbr

All you need is a bootable floppy with the fdisk program on it.

Be forewarned, however: The FDISK /MBR command will completely destroy the MBR (replacing it with one that shows no partitions allocated) if it does not find a proper signature in the sector. (0x55AA at offset 0x1FE). It will replace only the executable part of the MBR if the signature is found. Thus, a program such as Norton Utilities is a better choice in an attempt to repair a broken partition table.

For more info, including details on how to remove the Linux loader "LILO," see: http://computing.net/unix/wwwboard/forum/558.html. Microsoft also has a support page on the subject: Q171611 - Removing the Linux LILO Boot Manager that details an alternate way of uninstalling LILO if Linux is still installed (lilo -u /dev/hda). You can find LILO in the /etc/lilo/config directory of most Linux distributions. Examine the LILO readme files for details on how to configure it -- and to discover what commands like "lilo -v -v -v -t" do.

A common problem on dual-boot Linux/Windows systems is corrupted hard-disk geometry that results in LILO only displaying "LI" then hanging. This problem commonly occurs after using a tool such as Partition Magic 4.x to resize partitions. You can fix this by either reinstalling Linux or rebuilding LILO. In order to do this you'll need to use another computer to create a bootable Linux floppy with rdev set to your hard drive root partition. This corresponds to the root=/dev/... line in the lilo.conf file. After booting from this floppy,  you'll need to rebuild LILO by invoking /sbin/lilo. Ensure that /etc/lilo.conf is correct before rebuilding LILO.

In related news, Caldera, in May 2000, announced that it had signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement to integrate PowerQuest's PartitionMagic OEM version into OpenLinux. During the installation process, the companies say, PowerQuest's patented partitioning technology will automatically create the required separate partition for the OpenLinux operating system, making it easier for customers to set up and use the Linux operating system.

Prior to the agreement, Linux users would have to go through a complex and time-consuming process that involved backing up the
entire hard drive, reformatting the drive, repartitioning the drive with FDISK, restoring the backup and then installing Linux and LILO
or boot manager. To make things worse, if users wanted to change the partition at any point, they would have to repeat the entire process.

PowerQuest's BootMagic, which allows users to boot multiple operating systems on a single workstation, will also be bundled with OpenLinux.

Virtual Machines
An alternative to multiple-boot drive scenarios is the idea of virtual machines that can co-exist within your current operating system environment. One of the best known titles in the Macintosh world, Virtual PC, is now available for Windows PCs and, despite the fact that emulating a PC on a PC seems at first glance a very strange concept, it works surprisingly well.

We set up Virtual PC 4.0 for Windows on a Pentium 4 and installed and ran Windows Me from within Windows XP. It was very easy to set up and supports the loading of a wide variety of PC operating systems, including most Linux and Unix variants. This program could provide a solution for many programs that stubbornly refuse to work under any of Windows XP's compatibility modes. Read our review of Virtual PC for details, and find out more at www.connectix.com.

Perhaps the best known virtual machine emulator is VMware. We've tested both the Linux and Windows editions of this rather pricey (US$299) title and haven't been particularly impressed with the hardware support of either the 1.x or 2.0 releases. Version 3.0 looks to be a great improvement in this area. It is now available in beta form. See Betanews.com for details.

For Further Reading:

• WinPlanet - Tutorials - Multiple OS Booting Using Windows NT Loader - Creating
• Native Linux apps: http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml
• Windows emulation for Linux: http://http://pw1.netcom.com/~dagar/winefaq.html
• Terminal Services: Why VMware isn't an ideal solution
• Microsoft: Dual booting information page
• Review: Virtual PC and VMWare