How to Activate Multi-OS

These steps will guide you through activating the Multi-OS feature of BootIt NG. This article assumes that you understand how to access the BootIt NG utilities.

The Multi-OS feature of BootIt NG gives you the ability to boot multiple operating systems from a single partition. In other words, you could have one primary partition and be able to boot multiple versions of DOS, Windows 95, NT, etc. The only requirement is that all operating systems must support the file system being used in the partition.

The Multi-OS feature of BootIt NG supports FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32. The Microsoft operating systems that currently support FAT32 are Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003.

If you are going to install all of your operating systems to their own partitions, then you won't need the Multi-OS feature of BootIt NG at all. In that case, you would simply create your items to boot the appropriate partition.

1. Click the Maintenance button on the boot menu.
   
   
2. Click the Partition Work button on the BootIt NG desktop.
   
   
3. Highlight the existing partition.
   
   
4. Click the Properties button.
   
   
5. Rename it to whatever you wish.
   
   
   • If the Name field is greyed out, please refer to the article titled Unable to Name Primary Partitions.
     
     
6. Check the Multi-OS check box.
   
   
7. Click the OK button to apply the changes.
   
   
8. If BootIt NG recognizes the installed operating system, a new group and menu configuration item is created. If not, you can use the Groups button to add the files/group manually (see the Using the Multi-OS Feature section in the documentation).
   
   
9. If you had an existing boot item configured, you can now edit the boot menu and either delete the previous entry or add the group name to it.