partition magic 8.0

[samman]

Partition Magic 8.0 will not allow me to install an operating system in my new partition, created on a Win XP(NTFS). Any ideas?

[Dinosaur]

Run Partition magic again.

Right click on the partition where you want to install an OS. This displays a menu with Advanced as an option. Left click on Advanced, which will show you a Set Active option. Left Click on Set Active.

The above is likely to get you in trouble if you do not know exactly what you are doing. You will have a problem activating your current OS if you do the above. You should have rescue disks available if your system does not allow booting from a CD.

Partition Magic 8.0 is on a bootable CD. Verify that you can boot from the PM CD or make bootable rescue diskettes before you do anything drastic like hiding a partition or changing the active partition.

I think that an OS requires a primary partition and you can only have one such on a hard disk. You need some program which manages a system with multiple OS's. Otherwise, it is a pain. You have to hide each partition containing an OS you do not want and unhide the partition containing the desired OS.

Partiton Magic 8.0 includes Boot Magic, which is great for running multiple OS's, but it will not run under XP (or perhaps it will not run in an NTFS partition). I got around this by installing Windows 98SE in a FAT32 partition, which then became the bootable OS. I installed Partiton Magic & Boot Magic under Win98SE (Win95 or ordinary Win98 will do). I then configured Boot Magic to recognize both Win98SE & Windows XP.

Once you get Boot Magic running, it shows a menu when you boot your system. You can pick the OS you want to boot. If you do not pick one in 30 seconds (adjustable), it boots the default OS. It handles all the hide/unhide, set active, and whatever else is required when you are running more than one OS.

My Win98 SE hardly does anything because I never bothered installing drivers and applicaitons. It is only there because I wanted to use Boot Magic.

If I upgrade my second computer (used mostly by my girl friend) from Win98 SE to Win XP, I will do what is necessary to run Win98 SE on my current system, because some of my Win98SE applications do not run under XP. Then I will have to install better video drivers, print drivers, and all the other stuuf needed to really use Win98.

[Paul Komski]

I don't know what you mean by PM not allowing you to install an operating system. What messages are you getting and which operating system are you trying to install? BootMagic would not be my own preferred Boot Manager (it is one of the least versatile) and if you are trying to multiboot by adding a version of windows earlier than WinXP - dont until you get some more specific advice because it is not straightforward.

I think that an OS requires a primary partition and you can only have one such on a hard disk.
An OS requires a primary partition to boot from even though Windows may be installed on another partition. The system and boot partitions may be the same partition or can be different partitions. You can have up to four primary partitions on a normal HDD but only one of them should be marked as active at any one time - the one that you indend the bootstrap code to hand over the boot processes to.

PQ boot is an alternative to BootMagic (it works by changing the active partition) but must be installed on all installations on that hard drive. Both BootMagic and PQ boot only work with a single HDD.