We will boot the following operating systems on the same machine:
- Windows XP
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows 2000
- Windows NT 4.0
- Windows 98
- MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1
Required tools
- Symantec Ghost that runs on Windows XP
- BootIce x86 (https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bootice.html)
- Grub4DOS (grldr and ideally grub.exe in case you want to launch it from DOS)
- A USB drive
- Windows PE, BartPE, or Vista Install CD that will boot on the system in which Ghost can be run
- Ideally, a USB 2.0 PCMCIA Card (the system has 1.1, it's really slow)
- Installation media for the various operating systems (the factory images for NT4 and Windows 98 are on archive.org, use regular media for the other systems)
- Installing Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs was difficult as the installer didn't boot. I forgot how I solved this, I may have started the installation in a VM.
- I use Windows FLP as my working Windows OS - it has SP2/3 so runs reasonably modern software, but this creates a major performance hit on a Pentium III machine. For retro things, SP0 is desirable, so on my system I have Windows Server 2003 SP0 and Server 2003 R2 installed, as well as an XP image.
PLoP boot manager is installed in the MBR. All primary partitions except the NT4 partition are hidden. GRLDR will be in the NT4 partition with NTLDR. NTLDR will have an entry to start Grub4DOS. Grub4DOS will be used to change the active partiton (Windows 9x, DOS, and NT4 (but not 2000, XP, and later) need to boot from an active primary partition.) Menu.lst will contain options for Windows 98, DOS, and NT/2000/XP, which will make the relevant partition active. PLoP is used to always boot Partition 3 (rather than the active partition).
- DOS will be in the first primary partition. (500MB)
- Windows 98 will be in the second primary partition. (1300MB)
- Windows NT4 (and grldr) will be in the third primary partition. (2000MB)
- The rest of the drive will be an extended partition with the remaining OS partitions. Mine had:
- Windows FLPs (6GB)
- Windows 2000 SP0 (2GB)
- Windows 2003 SP0 (4GB)
- Windows 2003 R2 (4GB)
- Windows XP SP0 (4GB)
- two blank small partitions in case something else is needed
- A partition to hold Windows 7 or Vista (it doesn't work well, and I haven't documented how to set up BOOTMGR in this environment)
- A storage partition (copy all of the ghost images for the other OSes here, ghost itself, any driver installers, etc)
Each OS will need to be installed, and a ghost image taken. Assuming we're starting with a clean disk, you should use the factory images (which wipe the entire drive), and create a ghost image of the resulting NT4 partitions.
Once the factory images are ready, install each OS other than DOS (DOS installation process is trivial) alone on the system and take a Ghost image. When you install the latest version of Windows XP that will be used, copy \ntldr, \boot.ini and \NTDETECT.COM to the USB drive, you need the latest version to do other booting.