Is there a free 3rd party boot mgr?

[ziscwg]

I would love to get my 2 xp installs and 2 vista installs all on the same boot manager. Is there a free one that will work on NTFS on my C drive?

 

[JC634]

What do you need a different boot manager for? I have a machine at home with:

- Win2K
- Win XP Home
- Win XP x64
- Win Vista Home Premiunm
- Win Vista Business x64

I simply used gparted to make 6 partitions on 2 physical drives, and installed in the order above. The 6th partition was a "common" data partition. There is a limitation of how many partitions gparted would make. I do not remember the number, but it was less than 6, so that is why I used 2 drives.

Anyway, the boot manager is the last Vista installation. It lets you boot to any of the above. Again, what is the need for a 3rd party boot manager?

 

[digital_exhaust]

There is a limitation of how many partitions gparted would make.

Four.

And he's right, your Vista bootloader will handle your installs.... just as an fyi, grub is free and works with just about every OS out there.....

 

[FallenMystic]

I believe EasyBCD is free as well, havne't played with it much; though it seems to get referenced in quite a few 'how to' articles.

 

[iroc409]

I second either grub or the Windows boot mgr.

 

[Met-AL]

Here is my favorite one

http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

 

[SmokeRngs]

Four Primary partitions.

Fixed.

You can use extended partitions which allow for more partitions to be created on the disk. I have 6 partitions on my main drive.

 

[JC634]

Fixed.

You can use extended partitions which allow for more partitions to be created on the disk. I have 6 partitions on my main drive.

That's nice to know for future referance. Future in that I really detest the idea of trying to repartition/move 5 OS installs. Too much work to reinstall the OS's/updates/support SW in case something went South.