I currently have Windows XP Pro installed, and tomorrow I plan on installing Windows 2003 Enterprise Server, FreeBSD 5.3 b5, and Mandrake 10.1 on one of my external 200GB HD's. I was going to install FreeBSD last and use the default bootmanager and I was wondering if it would detect and boot all my OS' correctly? Would lilo/grub be a better option? Anybody have any experience with multiple windows and *nix os'? I would appreciate anything you have on the topic.

i've had issues with multibooting freebsd 5 and linux. i recommend installing freebsd before linux because linux seems to do weird things that confuse freebsd. theoretically it's possible to install linux first then freebsd, but ive had issues with it in the past.

for a bootloader, i highly recommend GAG. it lets you boot up to 9 different OSes and is really easy to install. you should make a GAG bootdisk as a backup and see if the freebsd or LILO bootloader works well, and if not, either modify them or just install GAG.

so you're trying to install linux, bsd and win on one hdd with xp on another? keep in mind the 4 primary partition limit when you're doing this.

Thanks for the link!!

Tomorrow I will know for sure if everything works or not. Hopefully Win2k3 Enterprise isn't all retarded.