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Become A Multiboot Power User

System Commander Deluxe gives you an OS choice.

by Richard Corzo

 

IF YOU ONLY run one operating system such as Windows 95 on your computer, you don't need to read this article. But if you ever have a need to run more than one operating system, you should read on.

Perhaps you're a game player who likes to play DOS-based games under real DOS. Or maybe you're in the computer field and need to support Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT, or try beta test versions of these. Or perhaps you want to stray even further and run things like OS/2, Linux, or the new BeOS that came from the Mac platform but now runs on Intel-compatible machines.

Depending on your needs, you may be satisfied with various options. For instance, if you have the Windows 95 retail upgrade version, you can press F4 when the "Starting Windows 95" message appears to boot into your previous version of DOS. If you install Windows NT on a machine with Windows 95 already installed, you will get a boot menu on startup to choose between running 95 or NT. If you have OS/2 Warp and install a Boot Manager partition at the beginning or end of your hard drive, you can boot OS/2--as well as any other operating system installed in a primary partition, such as DOS or some form of Windows.

In fact with DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, and OS/2 all installed you could wind up going through several of these multiboot facilities: from the OS/2 Boot Manager menu, select Windows NT, from the Windows NT multiboot menu select Windows 95, then press F4 directly, or indirectly press F8 and select "Previous version of DOS" to get to your installed version of DOS. Another way to get the OS/2 Boot Manager is to buy Partition Magic, which also allows you to repartition your hard drive without destroying the data in your existing partitions.

None of the above choices give you as much flexibility as System Commander Deluxe from V Communications. I had heard of this program before but was finally motivated to buy it with the thought of adding Windows 98 to my existing stable of operating systems: Windows 95, Windows NT 3.51, NT 4.0, and OS/2 Warp. Unlike IBM's Boot Manager, it does not require you to set aside a primary partition for it. (There is a limit of four primary partitions on a hard drive, including an extended partition that may contain multiple logical drives.) Instead it replaces your master boot record (MBR), which is what determines which primary partition gets booted when you start your computer. (You are actually modifying the MBR when you run FDISK and set the active partition.)

Well, replacing the master boot record didn't sound to me like a particularly safe thing to do, but the System Commander installation program backs up your existing MBR before it proceeds with the install.

You have a choice of installing System Commander from Windows 95, a DOS or Windows 95/98 DOS prompt, or from the included System Commander Deluxe boot diskette. The manual mentions that System Commander is not compatible with any form of compression. I chose the Windows 95 install and things seemed to go smoothly until the very end of the install. I got an error message indicating that I didn't have a bootable partition! I tried to stay calm and figure out what the problem might be, reading the extensive manual that comes with the product. I decided to make a tactical retreat and uninstall System Commander. This restored my original master boot record, and I was thankfully back to my original state where I could boot all my operating systems from
OS/2 Boot Manager.

After more than one attempt I started to suspect that the Boot Manager partition might be interfering with the System Commander installation. During installation, System Commander shows you your partition table, which indicates the starting and ending cylinder values for each partition. Apparently, my 1-cylinder Boot Manager partition overlapped the last cylinder of my extended partition.

Somehow this didn't prevent me from using my system in the past, but both Partition Magic and OS/2's FDISK indicated that there was some kind of partition table error. I reasoned that if I could get rid of the Boot Manager partition, that would make everybody happy. The only way I found to do this was to use Windows NT's Disk Administrator and delete the Boot Manager partition from there. I held my breath and did this, hoping that grave consequences would not result. (I did have reasonably up-to-date backups of my hard drive.) Fortunately, the computer gods smiled on me and I was able to shut down NT and then boot Windows 95 to try the installation again.

With my System Commander installation now successful, my next reboot showed me a menu of all the operating systems it had found already installed. However, if your experience is like mine, you may find some of the entries with strange names like QNX, or a lot more entries than operating systems you thought you had installed.

The sometimes funny names are explained in the manual. For instance, QNX may show up for OS/2 partitions. Some operating systems may modify the boot records of even logical partitions so that these will show up in the menu, even though not truly bootable. To straighten this out, I systematically tried each "operating system" choice on the menu and made note of those that actually booted. With all my operating systems accounted for, I proceeded to delete the false entries and rename the funny ones from the Setup menu. Now I was in business and truly felt like a power user.

One of the nicest features of System Commander is its MultiFAT feature, which allows you to keep a separate copy of key files like AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for each operating system that boots from a primary FAT partition. (FAT is the file system used by DOS and various Windows versions.) So you could, for example, create customized versions of AUTOEXEC.BAT for booting DOS for specific games. System Commander has its own standard set of key files for each operating system, but you can also add your own files to the list for each operating system choice.

Another nicety is the "Boot from drive A:" menu choice. By having this I could change my BIOS setup to not automatically boot from the A: drive before the C: drive. This saves a little time on bootup and prevents accidental boots from non-bootable diskettes that you forget to take out from the A: drive.

My next project was to install Windows 98 while preserving my existing Windows 95 installation. I installed 98 in a separate \WINDOWS directory on another partition, but since it does modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files, I needed System Commander to manage the separate copies I would need to still boot Windows 95 successfully.

System Commander inserts a check in each AUTOEXEC.BAT file to check for changes in key files and for the installation of new operating systems. It successfully detected the new installation of Windows 98, but I did experience one minor glitch. When I booted Windows 95 to confirm that it was still bootable, it worked fine except that it showed the Windows 98 logo instead of Windows 95 on startup! 98 had replaced the LOGO.SYS file that is used by both operating systems. I remedied this by adding this file to the File Management menu in System Commander Setup for these two operating system choices and copying the original LOGO.SYS for Windows 95 to C:\ when I was booted into that operating system.

System Commander Deluxe is called Deluxe to distinguish it from the previous version of System Commander. The first feature it adds is an OS Wizard, which is supposed to help you configure your system for the installation of a new operating system. I tried this after preparing a sufficiently large partition for installing Windows 98, but the OS Wizard informed me that it couldn't find a suitable configuration for installing 98. The other companion feature is a repartitioning tool to aid in preparing your system for a new OS. It only works on FAT partitions, so if you use NT's NTFS file system, OS/2's HPFS, or Linux, this won't meet your needs. I didn't actually try this feature since I already have Partition Magic, which I know and trust.

In summary, System Commander Deluxe is a very useful tool for a power user, but as you probably have gathered by now, it is not for novices. The Deluxe version should retail for about $65 to $70. There is also supposed to be a non-Deluxe version, which leaves out the OS Wizard and partitioning tool, that would have suited my purposes, but I wasn't able to find a copy in a local retail store. I also stumbled on a Windows 98 Special Edition version for about $30 dollars that is supposed to allow you to switch only between Windows 3.1 or 95 and a new Windows 98 installation. I did not evaluate this version, so I can't say how easy it might be for an "average" user to use. If you would like more information check the V Communications Web site at http://www.v-com.com.


Richard Corzo is a computer programmer currently working for Packard BioScience Company in Meriden, CT. He has been working with 32-bit PC operating systems for the past six years. You can contact Richard at rcorzo@ibm.net.

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