How about many OSes on your HD?

[Dodge7]

I ran across this http://www.hyperos2002.com/ on the web. I never thought of that, have mulitple systems, of the same type, and just switch to the next one when one gets flaky. Just recreate OSs as needed.

Or, as they suggest, you could have one Win 98 system for general use and one for internet use.

Anyone ever try this or this program?

Oh yeah, there is also a program to run two OSes on your computer at once. That is multiasking for you.

[GaryRouth]

Never tried (never heard of) Hyper-OS before. However, multi-booting has been around quite a while - but you don't necessarily have to spend money to try it out. A few years ago Randy Rossmiller wrote an article here at PC Mechanic covering some of the multibooting pros and cons. You can find that article at this link http://www.pcmech.com/show/os/334/

Many folks dual-booting are using Linux as one of their alternate operating systems. Most Linux distros include a free tool that can handle multi-booting (usually either Lilo or Grub, as they are called). Randy's article refers to both retail multi-bootloaders, like System Commander and Boot Magic (often part of Partition Magic), as well as the freeware tool XOSL.

I imagine a tour of the Utilities section over at download.com would yield many such tools. I'm afraid I haven't tried many. . . most of the dual-boot systems I've used were Linux/Windows - they all worked well using simply the Linux bootloaders. XP multiboots well as long it's installed last - it's bootloader is quite good.

. . . Gary

[bailey]

I have one computer running w98se and xp-pro
second one running w2000 and red-hat ver 9.0
and a 3rd one running dos 6.22 and w3.11

[Dodge7]

Do I need hyperOS? Let's say I have a C: partition and I create an E paritition on my HD. Could I start my computer from a floppy and use DOS copy [copy *.*] to transfer over everything to the E: partition?

bailey: what, no BeOS? [g]

Speaking of which, I had the free personal version of BeOS, it was easy to install. It just installed like a Windows program, and allocated extra space to run on. You started it from Windows, like any Windows app, then it shut Windows down and took over the computer. So you could experiment with another OS, but have minimual effect on your computer.

[fuzzai]

Dodge7, ive never tried that. and i dnot' think it would work. Registry and all that other fun stuff would be linked at C drive i THINK.
what you can do is make an E partition, and just Install another version of windows on it. you'll then have a dual boot, should automaticly make it for ya. and work fine.

Better yet. you guys could try and get a 30day trial i think it is of VMWare, you install this on your computer, and you can install "Virtual" machines in Windows
so basicly you have windows running on windows on VMWare, kinda cool. epscialy if you wanna install Linux and play around. you can't harm your original system.

you can even brows the net within this "virtual" computer.

[Dodge7]

Wait, so you mean you could have multiple Windows OSs running at the same time? Or Windows and Linux?

I know there is a Mac emulator for Windows where you could open mulitple Mac OSs on a Windows computer. I thought that was impressive. That was pre OS X though.

[fuzzai]

Yup.
Check out VMWare.
you can install, *depending on how much ram you have* multiple copies of windows, & linux if you want.
and they can all talk to eachother, you basicly build a little network, its kinda cool
if your Base install of windows was a server, you could make it a domain. install VMWare, and have win2k Clients log into your domain.

i like it to play with linux. if i wanna try new things. that way whatever i screw up. doesn't harm NOTHING

[MulderMan]

the hyperos software was reviewed in a computer magazine a while back, i have never tried it out. at home i multiboot with mandrake 10 and windows xp though.