Boot manager???

[Mini-Me]

Hi all.
:)

Anyone know of, or can reccomend a good boot loader thing?(not sure if correct name)

I want to be able to be given the choice to boot several different OS's from this boot-loader, such as XP, 98, Linux, BeOS, DOS...

What I need, is a program that sits on the boot-sectors of the C drive, and gives me a menu of which OS to boot, and from which drive to boot it from.

I am trying to use one super-PC, to run several OS's when I need them, but only one at a time. Each OS lives on it's own drive/partition.

Also, is there any kind of memory manager thing, that will allow me to use win98 with the 750MB of RAM I have in my machine at the moment.
98 does not like this much RAM, and falls over when trying to boot.
Perhaps a little TSR, that tells 98 there is only 256MB or so, or only allows it to see 256MB of the total - something like that???

Cheers!
:)


MM.

[Mini-Me]

Currently looking at OSL2000 boot-loader...
What do you guys think of this?

I have found a workaround for the win98 >512MB RAM issue - make adjustments to MaxFileCache and MinFileCache in system.ini...


MM.

[risk_reversal]

As regards Win98SE and ram >512Mb, this is going to be something tricky. Odds are that you will not be able to get it stable.

The MaxFileCache and MinFileCache in system.ini is one option so is addding MaxPhysPage (I think that is what it was, also in system.ini under the [386Enh] section).

The easiest way in my opinion to see whether 98 is stable is to go to Start>Run>Dxdiag>Display and run the 'Test DirectDraw' & 'Test Direct3D'. If they don't freeze then this is a positive sign.

As regards boot loaders many around. I currently use BootMagic (par of Partition Magic) but if you go to the Windows o/s system forum and search you will see many threads offering alternatives ie Acronis and BiNG.

All the best

[david eaton]

One possibility with Win98, is to set up a RAMdrive in the autoexec.bat file, so that it uses all RAM over512 Mb. Then set Windows to use this as the swapfile.

[risk_reversal]

david eaton, when you say:

One possibility with Win98, is to set up a RAMdrive in the autoexec.bat file, so that it uses all RAM over512 Mb. Then set Windows to use this as the swapfile.
Would this work in actuality or in theory only............I have a RAMdrive set up on my XP partition never thought of putting this on my 98SE partition since I did not believe it could overcome the 512Mb issue......

Cheers

[david eaton]

It was suggested on these forums some time ago, by Paleo Pete I think, who said it did work. I could not afford more than 384 meg of memory when I was running Win98, so I never tried it, but there is no reason why it should not.

[Mini-Me]

Thanks for the replies! Am looking into the suggested boot-loaders, and also the >512MB RAM thing. I thought that by making changes to MaxFileCache and MinFileCache, you can easily overcome the issue - instability is not what I want!!! :) MM.