Would it be possible to multiboot Windows 2000 XP Vista 7 8 8.1 10 & 11 on a single ssd

[Galaxy2007]

I have an older Dell Latitude E6500 with a Core 2 Duo P8700 and 4GB RAM, I was wondering if it would be possible to multiboot several versions of windows on this laptop lol

[jaslion]

Vm sure but multiboot no. 10 and 11 require gpt to boot and only 8 can also boot from that anything older will not work.

 

So if you had 2 ssds you could.

[emosun]

each OS would also need drivers for the hardware as laptop hardware isn't universal. You aren;t going to fins any computer that fully support 2000 all the way up to 11

[BondiBlue]

I don't think the Latitude E6500 has any support for Windows 2000, but you could definitely do XP through 11. I don't know why you'd want to do all that though, but you can if you want to. 

 

[BobVonBob]

29 minutes ago, emosun said:

each OS would also need drivers for the hardware as laptop hardware isn't universal. You aren;t going to fins any computer that fully support 2000 all the way up to 11

It definitely won't work with 11 given the TPM requirement, but there are probably computers from right at the end of Windows 2000 support that could just barely sneak by the minimum requirements for Windows 10. Windows is at least very backwards-compatible, if not a very good experience when doing so.

[GoodBytes]

On 7/5/2022 at 10:35 AM, iPdo said:

I have an older Dell Latitude E6500 with a Core 2 Duo P8700 and 4GB RAM, I was wondering if it would be possible to multiboot several versions of windows on this laptop lol

To run Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7* (Win7, it is a bit tricky as it doesn't support fully UEFI, so I am putting it on the same boat), your drive needs to be formatted as MBR. This is because GPT format only exists under UEFI world. BIOSs has no idea what it is, as it didn't exist back then. 

 

MBR has a limitation of 4 primary partitions. And so, you are limited to 4 OSs. To my knowledge, you can't boot from an Extended partition.

Maybe they are hacks that exist, or you might be able to pull something off with grub boot loader. I never looked. But "out of the box", standard installation, you are limited to 4. This is a MBR limitation not Windows. It applies to all OSs.

 

If you have a modern system with UEFI support, then thanks to GPT it supports 128 partitions if I recall correctly. And so, you can have 128 naive installs. That said, pre-Windows 8, the OS doesn't fully support UEFI, and so won't boot. (You might be able to install/use Win7, all depending on the UEFI/System... but no guarantee)

 

UEFI can only interact with drives formatted as GPT

BIOS can only interact with drive formatted as MBR

 

The best solution for your needs is as mentioned by others:

• Multiple drives and forget about Windows 11 (unless you want to break your head), or use multiple systems.
  or
• Use a VM.

[Vishera]

I successfully managed to use the Windows 7 boot loader for multiboot with XP,Vista,Windows 8,8.1,10 and 11.

It may work with Windows 2000 but i didn't try that.

 

Now i will tell you how i did that - First of all everything has to be MBR and it's not difficult to install Windows 8,8.1 and 10 on a MBR drive,

Windows 11 is a bit of a pain though.

 

Second, install Windows 2000 then XP then Vista in triple boot

 

Third, Install Windows 7 for quadruple boot

 

Fourth, Install Windows 8,8.1,10 and 11 in a virtual machine in legacy mode on a fixed size VHD file.

Shut the VM down and move the VHDs to the drive.

 

Fifth, In Windows 7 open Disk Management and mount the VHDs.

 

Sixth, Run CMD as Admin input this command for every Windows VHD:

bcdboot x:\windows

X = the drive letter of the VHD

 

Seventh, Congrats now you have multiboot with Windows 2000 XP Vista 7 8 8.1 10 & 11 on a single SSD.

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I successfully managed to use the Windows 7 boot loader for multiboot with XP,Vista,Windows 8,8.1,10 and 11.

It may work with Windows 2000 but i didn't try that.

 

Now i will tell you how i did that - First of all everything has to be MBR and it's not difficult to install Windows 8,8.1 and 10 on a MBR drive,

Windows 11 is a bit of a pain though.

 

Second, install Windows 2000 and XP in dual boot

 

Third, Install Windows 7 for triple boot

 

Fourth, Install Windows 8,8.1,10 and 11 in a virtual machine in legacy mode on a fixed size VHD file.

Shut the VM down and move the VHDs to the drive.

 

Fifth, In Windows 7 open Disk Management and mount the VHDs.

 

Sixth, Run CMD as Admin input this command for every Windows VHD:

bcdboot x:\windows

X = the drive letter of the VHD

 

Seventh, Congrats now you have multiboot with Windows 2000 XP Vista 7 8 8.1 10 & 11 on a single SSD.

That is actually pretty smart way of doing it!

[Vishera]

28 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

That is actually pretty smart way of doing it!

The Windows 7 bootloader officially supports XP and Vista,newer versions of Windows work really well with it and it supports/sees VHDs as real hard drives so it will let you boot off them,

Though only Windows 7 and later have the drivers/native support for VHD files.

 

And working with VHD files is a lot easier than working with partitions

[Vishera]

On 7/8/2022 at 7:43 AM, GoodBytes said:

That is actually pretty smart way of doing it!

I just tried doing that all over again - But Windows 2000 keeps giving me blue screens during installation (Probably because of my Ryzen processor)

But at least it worked with the others: