I think maybe you misunderstood, or I am misunderstanding what she is saying Markcynt.

She used Bootmagic as a bootloader, the default or first in the list of Operating systems was Vista and it loaded without her doing anything in say 30 seconds, but she could have arrowed down to either the 2nd or 3rd OS in the list and it would have booted the one she selected, which is what Vista's bootmanager will do to.

I do not understand why you are for most giving for granted that I want a complicated setup. In fact, I am looking for the easiest way to alternativelly boot one of my 3 OS partitions.

Could someone post the steps for this. Easy is the word.

Sorry I took so long to reply, but I had to reset my id. I hope that the message is not outdated by now.

Thank you for your help

The problem with BootMagic is 99% of us do not use it as Vista has its own boot manager program built in.
I myself can not help with this topic due to BootMagic. I only use Vista's boot manager program.

I do not understand it either. I used Partition Magic and BootMagic a long time ago. I have since re-formatted the drives. I only mentioned PM to explain what I am used to). This does not mean that this is what I want to setup.
In fact, PM and BM no longer work since I installed Vista. Even if it did, there is not much point installing a barely functioning program.
As to how to setup and maintain the boot, the easier the better. What I've been doing for Vista has been a cycle of formatting and installing clean. This is time consuming. Anything better than that.
I have been in contact with Acronis and Paragon.

Is it possible for you to just backup all of your files and start from scratch, format the whole hard drive and start with a clean setup?

Mark

markcynt wrote:

Is it possible for you to just backup all of your files and start from scratch, format the whole hard drive and start with a clean setup? Mark

If so then install XP first, then boot to Vista and install it next. It iwll then setup all of your dual boot for you. Youshoudl always install the oldest first.

I prefer no to. I already have 2 WXP installations that were installed first and then Vista was installed in an OS partition.

I think that would be the best way to do it. Yes it's a pain but once you do it it's done, finished. Then when you install XP and then Vista, (in that order) your dual boot will be automatically set up.

Mark