I would like to consolidate my 3 old computers running DOS, Windows XP and Linux onto my new laptop with 60GB harddrive and 512MB RAM.

My problem is in what order the operating systems should be installed. We need DOS for legacy purposes (pure dos, not emulated) and it needs to be on C:

When booting Windows XP, Iwant the DOS partition to be hidden so that 1) Windows XP can live in its default location on C: and 2) I don't get my DOS-drive messed up by Windows files. The DOS-drive is pretty much a snapshot of 1990 and it works fine and I'd like to leave it there

When booting Linux there's obviously no problem as I can chose not to mount DOS and XP.

The BIG QUESTION is this:

In what order should the OS'es be installed, and HOW do I get GRUB to hide the OS'es not in use?

The common sense way to do it is

1: MSDOS
2: Windows XP
3: Linux

But - I need GRUB to be able to hide the DOS partition, and GRUB comes with Linux. So if I do it in that way, Windows XP will automatically become D: and not C:...

Can anyone offer any insight on how to install these three operating systems from scratch, using GRUB from Linux to hide the DOS partition from XP and Linux ?

Thank you so much in advance - been pondering over this one for weeks without success!

You're right, the second MS install will put a couple of files onto the "C:\" partition. That doesn't really do any harm unless you want to delete that first partition, because then the second install won't work eirther.

Anywho, if you want both Windows systems ( doesn't matter what versions ) to think they are alone on the disk, it's been a while but this is how I did it....

Install the first MS system on the "C:\" partition.

Boot up with a linux livecd such as systemrescue cd.
Create a second partition.
After you have created the second partition, make a note of what type of partition the first one is. ( should be fat ) then delete the first partition.
Save the new partition table.

Boot up with the XP cdrom and start the install.
Select to install on the "C:\" partition which in fact is your second partition.
After the install is complete, boot up XP to make sure it works ok.
Edit the boot.ini to have timeout=0 and the xp partition is going to be #2 .....
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT

Now you boot up with the linux rescuecd
Get into fdisk and re-create the first partition as type fat which it used to be.
Save the partition table.
DO NOT FORMAT ANY OF THOSE PARTITIONS.

Edit the grub.conf file in your linux system to add both versions of windows.

Dear homey,

Thank you. This is yet another reason why I'm so happy with Linux - the community is helpful beyond my wildest dreams. I've been searching for this for ages, and what you are proposing makes good sense.

Now I have something to look forwards to this weekend :-)


-Yalla

I think what you want it grub's hide command.
http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/doc/Linu...boot-with-GRUB

You're welcome!