Snail#

I recently expanded my triple-boot PC to boot four operating systems off the same drive: DOS, Windows XP, Windows 7, and Debian.

Generally, in the old BIOS world, you'd handle this by having GRUB (controlled and configured by the Linux installation) as the main bootloader, and let it boot Windows and DOS from there. But I like to take a more unconventional method (detailed here) where I have the newest installed version of Windows control the main bootloader, and let Linux boot from DOS.

There were three big changes I made this time.

First, I kept Windows XP and Windows 7 both installed to separate extended partitions. I believe they both install their bootloaders to the DOS partition - I know Windows 7, by default, won't map it to a drive letter because it assumes it's just a system partition (you can change this from Disk Management).

To limit the number of consecutive menus, after installing Windows 7, I removed FreeDOS from the boot.ini used by Windows XP's bootloader (ntldr) and added it to Windows 7's (bootmgr). The bootsect.dos (extracted and created by Windows XP's installer) can be loaded through bootmgr by adding a new entry:

bcdedit /create /d "FreeDOS 1.3" /application bootsector
bcdedit /set {new-guid} device partition=e:
bcdedit /set {new-guid} path \bootsect.dos
bcdedit /displayorder {new-guid} /addlast

Options like /displayorder or /default can be used to customize its spot in the menu.

But most importantly, I still wanted Debian to boot from DOS so it wouldn't touch the MBR (making it easy to delete or replace from within DOS/Windows without breaking anything). But instead of installing grub-legacy in Debian to generate the menu.lst and using GRUB4DOS to boot it (which I'm sure would have worked fine), I wanted to use a method of booting Debian that would rely only on the partition GUID, and not on the drive number.

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I've got a Dell Dimension 4700. It's a 32-bit PC from the mid-2000s, and it's just barely new enough to have a PCI Express slot, which I used to add USB 3 ports, including a type-C, on a front panel (mostly because I thought it was funny).

The only actual work I do on this computer is writing, and the only way I can concentrate on writing is if my computer doesn't let me do anything else, and doesn't show anything else on the screen. That's why I do all my writing in Word 5.5 for DOS. For editing, I usually like to use Word 97 (with doswrd32.cnv), then export to HTML and copy to a thumbdrive.

I'd also like a Debian installation on there, just in case it comes in handy for some random project, but I don't want to commit to not touching it. There's a good chance I'm going to want to overwrite the installation at some point in the not-too-distant future - either by installing over it (maybe with a newer version), or removing it to make more space in my Windows partition for storing some big ol' files - and I don't want that to break my bootloader.

So I need to be able to:

• Boot into FreeDOS
  
• Boot into Windows (this computer's got a Windows 7 license, so that's what I'm using)
  
• Boot into Debian on the rare occasion I need it
• Delete the Debian partition without breaking the ability to boot into the other environments

In a normal triple-boot, you'd probably do something like this:

• Install Windows 7
  
• Install FreeDOS
• Install Debian using the rest of the available space

In this situation, Debian installs GRUB 2, which allows you to boot Windows 7 or FreeDOS instead.

But I don't want to commit to my Debian installation - I'd like to be able to overwrite or remove it, and still boot the other two operating systems on the drive. So what I want is a system that asks if I want Windows 7 or FreeDOS, then gives me a sneaky way to boot to Debian instead if I'd like. Turns out there's a setup that works really well in this very specific situation, and doesn't need any external boot disks. I'll walk through it below.

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