Installing and using several operating systems on a single PC
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000–2007
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If this happens, you won’t have to reinstall Acronis OS Selector, but you will have to
restore it by reactivating from a backup bootable disk (for more details see Chapter 9
«Bootable Media Builder»). After loading it, select Activate OS Selector in the Tools
section of the main menu.
Besides, automatic reactivation is provided for Windows 98 operating system. To do this,
Acronis OS Selector adds a REINSTAL.COM launch line into AUTOEXEC.BAT that restores
Acronis OS Selector MBR code. Still, if this program doesn’t do the thing correctly, you can
reactivate Acronis OS Selector manually.
It’s impossible to perform automatic MBR recovery under Windows Millennium Edition, as
this OS has a feature-limited version of MS-DOS 8.0 that can’t run programs from
AUTOEXEC.BAT.
8.2
Installing several Windows copies to a single PC
8.2.1 General
information
Any Windows operating system consists of two parts, bootable and main.
Windows 95/98/Me has the MS-DOS 7.0, 7.1, 8.0 operating system, respectively, as
bootable, while Windows NT/2000/XP has NTLDR OS core loader (that is also a simple
boot manager) that requires BOOT.INI configuration file NTDETECT.COM initial hardware
detector (for more details see Appendix B «Particularities of Operating System».
The main part of Windows OS is located in Windows (or WINNT), Program Files,
Documents and settings system folders that might be stored on any hard disk partition or
even disk, while the bootable part is required to be located on the first hard disk
primary partition.
The disk has to be the first, according to BIOS. This may vary from the enumeration
several operating systems provide. If there are several disks in the PC, you can see their
enumeration in the partition list in the Acronis Disk Director Suite main window. The disk
number will be provided in the WinNT4/2000/XP Number column (to make it visible,
right-click on column header line and check it.) The first disk in the system is numbered 0.
Due to these bootable part location limitations, you can avoid problems with Windows
only if you follow the installation order, according to which, older operating systems are
to be installed first:
Windows 95
Æ
Windows NT 4.0
Æ
Windows 95 OSR2
Æ
Windows 98
Æ
Windows Me
Æ
Windows 2000
Æ
Windows XP.
This operating system installation order solves boot problems. Otherwise, boot files of a
newer OS will be damaged by those of an older version of Windows that knows nothing of
its subsequent versions.
Acronis OS Selector breaks this limitation and eliminates the need to worry about
Windows installation order.
