Partitioning for multi-booting Windows

You can't. FDISK won't recoginze more than one primary partition. You only need one though. XP will boot just fine from an extended partition.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/meandxp.mspx

Normally you can create only one primary partition with fdisk. The rest of the HD will the extended partition.
However if you insist to create 2 primary partitions with fdisk, you need to fool your PC. You need to use a software called XOSL that can hide the primary partition that you have already created, then the system will think that no primary partition exists and it will accept to create another primary partition.
You can check XOSL here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030221060704/http://xosl.org/

I myself have two OS on my HD:
Windows 98 on Primary Partition and Window XP Pro on the extended one. It works just fine.

Can I ask why you went about it that way? I used to use Partition Magic's BootMagic but since Win2000 and WinXP both have the ability to detect an existing primary partition and install as a dual-boot setup I've just used those. Does XOSL have some other advantage other than just the boot install and setup?

There is no need to use a program to "fool" anything. FDisk does not support creating more than one primary partition, but you could use e.g. Windows 2K/XP's Disk Management to create four.

For clarification for those who aren't familiar with partitions etc., while FDisk can only make 2 partitions (one primary & an extended), you can easily split up the extended partition into multiple logical drives (which is more or less the same thing as a partition as far as how you'll see it in Windows Explorer anyway).

Fishin
I had win 98 already installed when I decided to add the Win Xp partition.
XOSL just hide the primary partition in FDISK


Monger
I was referring to FDISK. If you just wanna use FDISK then you need to use XOSL to create 2 primary partitions.
And logical drives can not be marked Active in the extended partition. Only primary partitions can be marked as Active. This is important if you want to delete a primary partition, your PC won't boot if the other OS is on logical drive.
However in W2K and XP you can create up to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions with 1 Extended partition. Always try to put your OS on Primary Partitions.

I know. I was noting that it's not usually necessary to use fdisk for the purpose you described.


If you're gonna use additional software, why not just use a program that lets you create multiple primary partitions in the first place so you don't have to go back & forth between 2 applications? (There are certainly DOS-based programs that can do it as well.)


Good point, and good advice in many situations.