If you're saying you can create a 28GB RAM drive in Windows XP I have no answer for you for that. All I can do is point you to the publicly available information concerning PAE on Wikipedia and/or Microsoft's website. You'd have to do further research yourself to find an answer to that I'm afraid.

I didn't specifically click with that, but it's more of a generalization for anyone really,

I'm not a particularly big fan of multi-booting personally. I was from 1994 or so up through around 2003, but after experiencing a number of problems due to that I stopped using multi-boot and started using separate computer systems and virtual machines instead which was a better match for my personal needs.

Multi-booting does have it's valid uses for some folks of course though.

Didn't realize your setup was like that, but it makes more sense than having just XP alone. I too disable all the eye candy crap and reconfigure my OS to more or less look like Windows 98 so perhaps we have that in common. :)

Haven't seen it yet either, probably sometime over the holidays. A friend and I made plans tonight to get together sometime next week and do a Star Wars marathon watching all 6 movies before going to catch the new flick at the theatre. ;o)

Yup, same here exactly. I've got a stack of CD/DVD boxes of games I haven't really played but sat aside for days when I had a better PC. Now I have it and they still sit there LOL. Plus I now have 3000 foot high stacks of games on GOG, Steam etc. to add to the list, and a new list of titles I'm waiting to play until when I eventually buy a new GPU. ;)

History repeats itself. ;)

Yeah, sometimes games that wont work in Windows 7 or newer or in Windows 7/x64 or newer can be made to work by tweaking the shortcut or some other Windows setting, or by editing an INI file for the game or installing some patch or 3rd party hack, or by using a virtual machine or any number of other possibilities. Sometimes it is worth the effort if one wants to put it in, and sometimes it's a throw your arms in the air and scream moment. :)

Fortunately I can't think off the top of my head a game I own that explicitly won't work in Windows 7 although I know I did encounter a few. Old games like Warcraft II and Starcraft have messed up graphics on some screens but the game itself works. If I ever find such games in my catalog and want to play them badly enough I'll try them in a VM or in Linux under Wine or something though. Worst case, is I have these Acer crap machines here and can boot up Windows XP without a network cable plugged in if I need to. :)

Personally, I'd take a HP or Compaq over an Acer even if it was free. :) However if there are other internal parts I'll gladly cannibalize them out and put into my own chassis. Muhahahaha!

Damn hardcore. Flight Sim fanatic. I always loved the sims. Falcon AT was damn nice even though it was outdated it ran at the time really smooth on a 386. Falcon 3.0's intro always made me drool. Unfortunately, the pilot firing and explosion didn't always sync but the music was bad ass. I think it was all about the graphics for me on that game. I did enjoy ejecting and just watching paint dry...

F-29 Retaliator was a good one I played with another guy over a dial up modem.

I still got Falcon 4.0 sealed when I spotted it on a visit to Canada. I'll probably just play the one that I bought from GOG with the BMS 4.32 patch. Try it out if you haven't. It'll love your 32GB of RAM!

Here's a little promo sneak peak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_NWPf7MOIQ

A definite improvement over Falcon 3.0 or those Microsoft Flight Simulators.

Your graphics card is on par with the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, slightly better than my GTX 750 but that 7850HD sucker of yours is one power hungry 130 Watt hog!

As for SSDs I do have a few still sealed. I was going to purpose them to my HTPC which had lower specs for Blu-ray playback and another for a PS3 rig.

I might do another for just the Multi OS Boot but once the OS is loaded honestly XP barely taps the hard drive and with my TEMP folder and Virtual memory page file pointed to my Ramdrive. It's going to have the same effect but better than any SSD. Real Memory > SSD access time.

Actually now that you brought it up I did a little digging and found those videos and a tutorial.

Booting Windows 95 on PS3 with DOSBox!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjIPF2EHa_o

It looks like they used DOSBOX for Linux to run Windows 95 on the PS3.

Here was one running Starcraft on a PS3.
Starcraft on the PS3 Phat running Windows 95 with Qemu & Yellow Dog Linux guide in discription
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQHlFPRPhHA

[Tutorial] Install Windows XP on PS3 (Revived)
http://www.ps3hax.net/showthread.php?t=4243

Yes AMD and Intel used to play nice in the little sandbox but I doubt they are exchanging toys any more. :)

Right now I bet the Intel kid is thumbing his nose at the AMD kid.

There used to be a tight race of I got there first and then the other guy similar to the nVidia vs AMD marathon.

To me it seems like AMD is still playing catch up. They did luckily get their APU into the the PS4 and Xbox One console which could be their saving grace at the moment.

Again I flip flop according to my needs so whoever makes the best graphics card performance per watt in the PCIe powered only category gets my eye. And if it is in the 50-60 Watt TDP range there is going to be a higher probability of there being a passive model being released. :) I have used Sapphire Ultimates which from I've seen just use AMD GPUs. However with nVidia's recent Maxwell GTX 750 it was to big of a leap to ignore at the same or close TDP as both are PCIe powered.

I hate those Intel Atoms. I heard they were much slower than the Pentium M which to me was a step back. I'm not sure it the ball game has changed today but it's left a negative impression on me since then.

I even adapted a Pentium 4 Mobile chip into my P4 desktop and used my older P4 cooler without the fan running to cool it down. I had to locate the lowest TDP they had in order to do it but damn I love me a passive P4. P4's were the most power hungry SOBs with the noisiest CPU fans a reason why it was a mixed blessing. Using this as a pure DOS system or Windows 98SE would be pure bliss now that I adapted the P4 and made it passively cooled. It's usefulness would probably be relegated to DOS / Windows 98 SE / 2000 Professional and maybe XP but only for networking as this Ivy Bridge has taken over all XP gaming responsibilities.

And yes it sounds like the AMD CPU Fan boy has to make a decision once again but probably not for at least another 4 years. I'm still curious about Cannonlake because Intel is quickly running out of ideas as how far they can shrink silicon and they might have one more generation after Cannonlake before switching to some other material or even consider quantum CPUs but from what I've seen you need sub-zero temperatures to cool those but those are like portable time machines being able to calculate possibilities in a fraction of the time our binary CPUs. Maybe some place in the North pole would be a nice place to beta test the consume model without running a huge energy bill.

At one point AMD did have the upper hand in lowest TDP. I seem recall the Athlon XP being able to outdo the Intel counterpart.

My quest for the best upgrade arrived when the Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge era finally had something worth testing out. The Intel iGPU was something that peaked my interest and seeing I had an opportunity to upgrade and play around with it was worth the risk while still maintaining XP driver support. This was as early as 2011 and no end in sight for XP support dropping. At first I had a friend who was looking to build a desktop so I did research and the i5-2500K was the best bang for the buck and included the Intel HD 3000. Building the rig gave me new insight into taking the plunge into a Z77 motherboard that fortunately still had IDE and Floppy controllers on it! No ISA slots but DOSBOX had matured enough that ISA Sound Blaster sound cards were no longer required to play and enjoy those classic while in an XP environment. Everything from Haswell on has no IDE or Floppy and that casket was closed permanently. The next legacy coffin coming up is the legacy 15 pin D-sub VGA port. So I've transitioned my fixation from Intel iGPU ever since they dropped XP drive support toward nVidia last line of VGA port included graphics cards. The GTX 700 line is the end of the road for that from what I've seen in the GTX 900 line. However I have seen a few DDR3L / DDR4 Skylake motherboards that have the legacy VGA port running off of the iGPU which is interesting but I know the Cannonlake iGPU is not going to be nowhere near powerful enough to even match the GTX 750 in terms of performance nor will it have XP 32-bit drivers so I will not be caring about Cannonlake iGPUs as much except their low end Intel® HD Graphics 530 is pretty good and way ahead of the Intel HD 4000 in terms of processing power. From the passmarks it puts it even higher than my AMD HD 6570 which if it is true might even run Crysis 1 pretty good in a 64-bit OS (Vista / 7).

At one point I was tweaking the motherboard to undervolt the iGPU to squeeze whatever small amounts of watt I could in order to reduce my total wattage usage below 35 Watts. But most likely the iGPU and DDR3 memory voltage tweaking would only provide minimal wattage drops if any compared to undervolting the CPU which provided the best results.

Now wouldn't be a good time to upgrade if you're determined to stay with AMD as far their performance per watt line up. But for power efficiency I think Intel is still the winner and it wasn't until Skylake that we see any reason to blink an eye towards upgrading or iGPU interest. I'm not sure if AMD's iGPU is worth comparing since the CPU is the most important then the graphics card and I just consider the iGPU a bonus. The upcoming DDR4 64GB+, USB 3.1, PCIe 4.0 for starters will certainly be interesting for those with computers 5 years or older.

The original goal of my build was to find the lowest wattage CPU with quad core I could get my hands on. And it turns on the low wattage versions are hard to find so instead I opted to get the K class unlocked processor so that I could underclock and then undervolt it to match my needs. At the moment there is no other way to accomplish this and most people getting a K class processor are scratching their heads reading this because they are going the polar opposite direction and overclocking their system and using a water cooling system while enjoying their jet engine sounds coming off their dual or triple nVidia baking ovens. It's just not my thing and plus heat is the enemy of electronics and the last thing I want is something to fail bringing down my system. Fans eventually pick up too much dust or stop moving and all that crap that gets sucked into the chassis. It wasn't until the Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge era that the best passive CPU cooler was on the market to cool this sucker without needing any power. All necessary steps to build my passive system was timed right and everything seemed to aligned in the PC world to make it happen including a passive PSU. The other idea behind my desktop build was I was in love with my Pentium M ultralite that was passively cooled (not one internal fan) that I had to try and duplicate this in a desktop set up.

If you're interested the Vaio laptop that was fan and the thinnest way before that MacBook air even could claim being the first to do it.

http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-vaio-x505/

It had its negatives having only 2 USB ports, limited to RAM 1GB MAX, a small measily 1.8" 20GB MiniIDE laptop hard drive which some have replaced with an SSD!



Sony Vaio X505 booting with Samsung 32GB SSD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhOyy1c-B7U



About a year or more ago that laptop which served its purpose as a surveillance camera fell apart due to constantly opening and closing the lid. It had some really tiny screws that were easily stripped so I have yet to put aside time to repair it.

In the meantime I repurposed some $20 Vaio 15" laptops off eBay and now have a better laptop that uses standard SATA laptop hard drives easily replaceable than those 1.8" ones and Dual Core with a DVD optical drive, firewire 400, 4 USB 2.0 ports (most laptops have 2-3), Modem, Ethernet, MIC and headphone, VGA port and ExpressCard 54mm slot which I plan on adding USB 3.0 ports to using an ExpressCard adapter giving it a boost. This one was originally handicapped to use only 3GB by the chipset but I found a trick to get it to 5GB so it actually can use 64-bit Vista / W7. The only added touch was swapping out the original laptop CPU with a best bang for the buck one off eBay which boosted this sucker into a very powerful desktop equivalent machine. You could even use a USB to PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard adapter and use external devices (I usually despite using the touchpad and internal keyboard) and output the Video to an external monitor. At the moment this laptop can do almost the same Multi OS setup booting between XP 32-bit / Vista 64-bit / W7 64-bit. Currently booting into the XP 32-bit on it because it just runs faster and no need to worry about security since it is just an offline system for now and I usually turn off the wifi switch on the front and luckily no built in web cam so I don't have to put a sticker over it.

Oh on the subject of local security regarding your desktop. I forgot to mention if you truly want to secure that sucker you need to pry off all the USB ports and use just the PS /2 keyboard and PS /2 mouse on it. I've heard some people just fill it with hot glue. USB ports are the best way to gain access to someone's computer.

SW marathon on Blu-ray planned myself before EP7 although I favor the original trilogy (4,5,6). Jar Jar NO!
Been too busy I missed out seeing The Martian and Spectre... "Me regrets time enough Not"




Getting back to the Multi OS Boot Configuration Set Up.

It depends on what OSs you were trying to set up in the Multi OS configuration.

I mainly stuck with Microsoft OSs so it simplifies the process and doesn't corrupt the boot loader.

Go to BIOS and look for your SATA configuration.

Change it from AHCI to IDE compatibility mode.

Simplest XP / Vista / W7 method.

Have a wiped hard drive.

Partition out the space:
Free program

http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/comparison/epm-free.html

Recommend you make them into NTFS 32GB partitions to simply the process.



C: 2GB FAT 16 for BOOT loader
D: 32GB FAT32 or NTFS - XP 32 bit
E: 32GB NTFS - Vista 64 bit
F: 32GB NTFS - Windows 7 64 bit
G: remaining hard drive space left over for - Program files or Data files storage redirected location away from OS partition.



Easier with a 128 GB or 120GB hard drive. Less formatting and easier to deal with partitioning although you can use up to a 2TB max hard drive due to MBR restrictions for a bootable drive.

For this setup you're going to need the original Windows OS Discs: XP, Vista, and 7.

Insert the XP one first and choose the D: partition to install a NEW OS not upgrade.

Go through the entire setup procedure you don't even have to install the drivers for anything.

Next phase reboot after XP fully installed and has gone to the desktop.

Insert the Vista OS Disc and choose the E: partition to install a NEW OS not upgrade.

Same thing let it install the OS until it reboots and finishes booting to the desktop.

Finally Insert the Windows 7 OS Disc and choose the F: partition to install a NEW OS not upgrade.

Same thing once again going through the OS being installed until in finishes on your desktop.

Now to change your default operating system for bootup.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/easily-set-default-os-in-a-windows-vista-and-xp-dual-boot-setup/

Otherwise it will just default to Windows 7 after the timer runs out at the boot loader screen.

You can also change the default timer from 30 seconds to 2 seconds or less if you want it to boot faster to your default operating system.

If you want to change operating systems just hit the up or down arrow key on your keyboard to choose it before the timer runs out and hit the enter key. Simple.

Done there's your Triple XP / Vista / W7 in a compressed outline.

I saved you the trouble of dealing with having a DOS bootable boot loader but that's more my thing and most likely going to complicate things further adding it but this the easiest way to triple OS Windows boot.

Then once it's all done Ghost or use some imaging program for each partition that way you have a backup of its cleanly installed state prior to installing any drivers or software keeping it the smallest and leanest image possible. You might also want to delete any page swap and hibernation files first before imaging as some imaging programs will back that up and that would increase the size of the image wasting space.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/easily-set-default-os-in-a-windows-vista-and-xp-dual-boot-setup/

I usually permanently disable my hibernation and the file as it is based on how much total memory you have installed. In your case and mine that would be a 32GB hibernation file!

Now you can go ahead in each operating system and slowly install the Video and Audio drivers first, then the Chipset and USB drivers following. I'd then go with Ethernet and then stop there since I don't install my wifi drivers that way no chance they would work and any hacker couldn't take advantage of it. To the OS it is dead.

Then proceed to Vista repeat and W7 repeat and bam you're done.

Do one more ghosting or imaging of each OS partition and back those us and rename it something you will understand later.

I'll even create an Images.TXT file and identify what image each filename is for my record because sometimes it might be a while before you'll need to restore these images. These are like your lifeline.

Now you can then go to your operating system and install whatever software you want and use it like normal.

If you really want you can install your base applications that you normally use and ghost image it one more time and then you can start using your computer doing whatever you want.

This final image is usually helpful for those who want a quick restore to a working useful condition.

I keep images of:
OS installed prior to drivers
OS installed post drivers
OS installed post driver and application software

Usually this is all you'll ever need.

The ghost imaging software I use is Norton Ghost DOS version so I usually use a DOS bootloader in my setup so I don't need a floppy drive or USB floppy drive. Then I just run Ghost and restore the partition from image. It might actually be more helpful to use Windows 98 SE DOS CD to create the C: 2GB FAT16 partition using FDISK first or FDISK 64GB release for larger hard drives. Although to use this patch you need Windows 98SE to decompress the new FDISK.EXE so it's a chicken or the egg game. It then assimilates the 98SE DOS into the boat loader and keeps the bootloader in the C: drive. This allows you to isolate the actual 98SE / XP / Vista / W7 bootloader on the C: drive. This comes in handy when the bootloader gets corrupted or modified I restore it with USB DOS bootable disk and the bootloader ghost image is very small I think somewhere around 16MB at most. Rather than restore an entire OS partition with the bootloader on the same partition this saves a lot of time if the bootloader itself got corrupted.

Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/263044

If you are using a Windows image restoration program it might be a bit trickier because you must be inside a Windows OS before you can image a partition.

Maybe there is a Linux equivalent imager that is USB bootable to do the same trick.

That's all there is too it.

Virtual Machines are great but sometimes even they can't emulate all the hardware you want or run all the software with 100% compatibility. Might not be an issue running dry apps but for certain games this might pose a problem or because it's using emulated video or sound hardware it might even perform slower than your native hardware.

I would say the hardest part is knowing what hardware is in your Device Manager first, getting a snapshot, and then hunting down all those drivers for the appropriate OS first before the project starts. If anything the Video and Audio drivers are all you need to get started in the OS. The Chipset, Ethernet, and USB drivers are important for functionality if you need to use the OS. After that you can pretty much use your OS to hunt down any remaining drivers while being able to use the internet.

The biggest mistake I made in calculating hardware for this system, was that I bought an SSD that was too small for my actual needs. The XP system it was replacing had a 20GB hard disk which was downsized from a 40GB one before that and larger ones before that. It was ridiculously disk constrained and I normally only had 2-3 games installed at any given point in time. In a way I was punishing myself out of laziness more than any other reason, just recycling hardware on hand whenever something failed even if it was a downgrade of sorts.

So, I estimated that Windows 7 would use a fair bit more disk around 2-4GB or so, and that I'd probably install a number of additional things more than I had on XP including many more games. I did the math and figured that a 120GB SSD would be far more than adequate for my needs but holy crap was that a dramatic underestimate of the century.

When I first installed Windows 7/x64 onto the SSD, once the install was completed and the system rebooted but before I installed anything else - over 70GB of space was used up on the SSD just from Windows alone! My eyes popped out of my head. Obviously something had to be wrong so I went digging and it didn't take too long to discover that Windows 7 apparently automatically creates a default swap file that is equal in size to RAM, so it made a 32GB swap file on my SSD drive. I resolved that by creating a 1GB fixed size swap file on my first hard disk instead and disabling the swap file on the SSD completely. All systems benefit from swap no matter how much RAM they have in them, but 32GB was extremely excessive, and for my own purposes I definitely did not need swap operating from SSD, so that recovered 32GB of wasted space. After more digging I discovered Windows enables the hibernation feature by default even on desktops and that gobbles up another amount of disk space that is up to the size of RAM also. I disabled hibernation and deleted the file and recovered around another 27GB of SSD. I hunted for other areas of the filesystem that seemed to be using a lot of space and cherry picked some other things to offload to hard disk instead, either by reconfiguration or by using Windows junction points.

Even after doing all of that stuff, within months I found my SSD was constantly in a state of running out of space even though I installed most games etc. onto the hard disks to avoid hitting a wall. Lesson learned for me was that a 120GB SSD is extremely too small for how I currently use the system even when I offload tonnes of stuff to hard disk. I definitely need to get a 240-480GB or bigger SSD in the near future if they ever have reliable mid-end SSDs on sale for good prices that stand up to both consumer reviews and hardcore industry testing.

The thing that sucks is that I actually have zero games installed on my SSD right now, it's all other software. Kinda sucks. :)

Crazy. :) Interesting, I didn't realize QEMU ran on Cell architecture.

If you noticed how I set up the Multi OS partition sizes they fall perfectly enough within the confines of a 120-128GB SSD that go for real cheap. As SSD prices drop for up to 2TB to mechanical hard drive like prices of $70 or less I would then upgrade the SSD boot loader drive and maybe keep it on one hard drive. But I still prefer a dual hard drive set up if I can.

The idea is to make only yours OS installations on their own partitions and not shared with the boot loader partition. This keeps the boot loader small so that when I image it the size is around 16MB and easily restored in a flash.

You could also on the cheap get one of those SD to SATA adapters and use like a 8GB SD card and create the same result. Maybe even swap SD cards with different boot loaders now that I think about it would be easier than a hard drive swap.

I'm already having a space constraint on this XP partition I set up a few years ago because I used 8GB. Apparently I should have gone with a size of 16GB but 32GB would actually be sufficient for a long while. But remember if you are making larger partitions it reduces the amount of space for the other OSs that can be installed on the SSD. A 120-128GB SSD in my case fits the bill since it works fine in 98SE DOS for partitioning purposes. You could partition larger than 64GB partitions but it causes strange size reports back in FDISK. So I usually try to make it easier on myself by sticking within its limits. So in theory you could just do a XP / W7 64-bit / W10 64-bit if you wanted to be efficient with your Multi OS set up.

Primary Hard drive - SSD 120-128GB
C: 2GB FAT16 - Boot loader
D: 24GB NTFS - XP 32-bit
E: 32GB NTFS - Windows 7 64-bit
F: 32GB NTFS - Windows 10 64-bit
G: 36GB - storing XP images and bootloader image.

Secondary Hard drive - Mechanical 2TB
H: NTFS - storing Windows 7 / Windows 10 images, Program files destination, Temp drive, Pagefile.sys, Hibernfil.sys if it can be redirected. All other data and downloaded content.

In this set up you should be fine for a while unless people writing bad software constantly write to the OS partition then you'll have problems with space.

But if you want to future proof a bit more it might be better to do a XP 32-bit / Windows 10 64-bit instead that way you got both older 32-bit XP software and newer 64-bit W7 / W10 software covered under one roof. I'm assuming Windows 10 64-bit can run all Windows 7 64-bit software flawlessly and since I haven't installed Windows 10 64-bit yet I can't tell you how compatible it is yet. But assuming DX 12 can run DX 11 and DX 10 and DX9 and prior games then it might just be a matter of some tweaking as you put it to get it to work on a newer OS.

In the case of Vista and W7 I actually should state 48GB would be preferable or even 64GB at the max but I was only demonstrating if you can install the OS onto the partition you just redirect the destination partition to your secondary hard drive in this case a 2TB internal SATA hard drive one whole NTFS partition. Just extract a hard drive like this from a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB for about $67-$80 on Amazon.

Primary Drive SSD 120-128GB
Secondary Drive Mechanical Laptop Hard Drive 2TB

That's the optimal setup. You don't always need a SSD to load all your games. That's going over budget for most people and unless you are Bill Gate's son you'd buy a 2TB SSD or larger for your secondary drive.

Having just one hard drive has a lot of potential for failure and the thing I like about having one hard drive dedicated to a boot loader is because it's so tiny that I can replace it with just a small 64GB SSD as a primary drive for just the boot loader and boot loader / XP image. XP images are really small I think less than 2GB after full installation. Might be more like 1.5GB or less from memory. After all the drivers installed it pops up close to 2GB.

If following a dual drive setup with a small boot loader drive. You can find cheap 40-120GB Sata drives on eBay for this purpose and have multiple drives to swap as your primary drive with different boot loaders to experiment without worrying about corrupting your main boot loader drive.

Primary hard drive
C: Boot Loader (98 SE DOS, Vista, 7, 8, 10) probably below 64MB in size - guessing as I haven't installed Windows 10's boot loader yet but each version of Windows' boot loader increases in size but still has the capability to call upon older Windows boot loaders.

All the OS partitions would be installed on the Secondary hard drive.

D: 64GB NTFS - XP 32-bit
E: 64GB NTFS - Vista 64-bit
F: 64GB NTFS - Windows 7 64-bit
G: 64GB NTFS - Windows 8.1 64-bit
H: 64GB NTFS - Windows 10 64-bit
I: 64GB FAT32 - Images location for DOS Ghost restoration.
J: NTFS - All remaining hard drive space for directing the "Program Files" installation location and "My Documents" and any other downloads or data you store on one huge chunk. You would also store your images here too if you want for the 64bit OS. Also pointing to I: for all OS pagefile.sys and hibernfil.sys. That way whenever you boot into an OS it doesn't waste space on the OS partition of each OS. They will all be commonly sharing the same partition for writing the pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys files. This makes the I: partition the most efficient for this purpose. Also you could in theory point these two files to a large RAMdrive as well like I do in XP so you don't end up constantly thrashing the hard drive. The Hiberfil.sys you might not be able to redirect so I might be mistaken there because it may not like RAMdrives but then again I haven't tested this but in theory if you can modify the registry and redirect the Hiberfil.sys destination then I don't see why it can't be pointed to a Ramdrive partition. Pagefile.sys on the other hand can be redirected to a RAMdrive as I do this on XP and later OSs.

The idea of having an I: as being FAT32 is so you have a way to retrieve a boot loader image or XP partition image while in DOS and also you can rename the files after imaging them in DOS so you know sort of what each image is purposed for and then create a Images.txt file using Copy Con and hopefully use Edit.Com for DOS to edit the text file easily. Norton Ghost for DOS can write to and restore images from NTFS partitions by DOS has no native ability to access NTFS files.

The other idea with keeping it as 64GB partitions is it makes it easier to partition the drive into reasonable chunks for formatting and also from my experience if you keep the OS installation lean and trim instead of installing all program files to the default OS partition you redirect it to your secondary Data storage partition I mentioned in this case would be the I: drive above. Practicing this method your OS partition would never bloat to 64GB and have plenty of room for a long time. Imaging it also would be quicker without backing up all your program files. The point of having a small and compact OS image is just to restore it. You can always restore your applications later. If you didn't follow this rule you could have a bloated partition close to 1TB or more if you constantly installed games onto your OS partition. In that case imaging a 2TB partition would be a nightmare to backup and restore quickly.

For the secondary hard drive I would stick to a 2TB MBR limit for compatibility reasons and also to make it easier to deal with XP 32-bit.

You could also then add a Tertiary hard drive of 10TB or greater for GPT support and only use that as a data storage drive when booting into Vista 64-bit or later as one giant partition.

So the possibilities are endless.

However concerning your need for playing games off a SSD instead of your OS hogging it.

I would use a set up like this.




Primary drive for boot loader - I listed all possibilities above (cheap 20GB-120GB mechanical, SD to SATA adapter, or 128GB SSD)

Secondary 2TB mechanical for OS and program files

Tertiary instead of a 10TB GPT 3.5" SATA mechanical hard drive you could opt to put in a large 2TB SSD drive in here as one partition and install only your games onto it and nothing else if you get my drift.





P.S. side note on multiple hard drives and drive letters.
The more hard drives you put it in does get a bit confusing

For example:

Hard drive 1
P1, P2, P3

Hard drive 2
P1, P2, P3

Hard drive 3
P1, P2, P3

HD1 P1 = C:
HD2 P1 = D:
HD3 P1 = E:

HD1 P2 = F:
HD1 P3 = G:

HD2 P2 = H:
HD2 P3 = I:

HD3 P2 = J:
HD3 P3 = K:





It can be quite a mess in figuring out what letter is what drive when you introduce multiple hard drives with multiple partitions.

That's why if I wanted a tertiary drive set up I try to keep the C: as boot loader and just one partition on a small hard drive.

The secondary drive I would create the multiple OS and data partitions on.

A third hard drive would just be one single partition so it doesn't affect the other partition letters as much.




By far a dual hard drive setup is the easiest to deal with in most scenarios for a Multi OS rig.

Another issue with Vista and later Windows versions is they always identify the partition letter it is installed as C:. So say you installed Windows 7 on HD3 P3 which should be K:. When you check in My Computer it will call itself C:.

However in Windows XP they followed the hard drive letter rules correctly and if XP was stored on HD1 P3, it would label itself as G: which is correct instead of a false C: reported by Vista and later Windows versions.

This is why it's also helpful to plot out your partitions ahead of time and what drive it will reside on and then create a Volume Label for each partition so you know you what partition you are going to install XP, Vista, W7, W8.1, and W10 onto.




So now that you see how complex this can get yes the flip side of using VMs seems trivial in comparison since you just save the VM image as a filename and you are done and just stick with one giant OS partition. However even when not doing a Multi OS set up I still think it's wise to create at least two partition on one hard drive. C: for boot loader and OS, D: for Program files / Data.



However in the end the benefits of natively running the game for me on its proper OS is > than the journey getting there. :)

I reap all the rewards of compatibility and the system being fully utilized for audio and video instead of emulated or hindered in some way. ;)


As for the 28+GB Ramdrive on XP Pro SP3 PAE enabled, I think it's tapping into the PAE since I've used the Ramdrive before and filled it up with webcam videos and none of the files were ever corrupted and installed and tested a bunch of XP game demos on it without any BSODS and as far as stability I've never had any issues using it with Firefox. So whatever MS warns about PAE to me could be half truth half lie. I've been using this system for about 2 years now and the Ramdrive for maybe 1 year now so I would have noticed any BSOD frequency occurrences. All I know is it works and that's all that I care about since I hate the extra memory just sitting there doing nothing and when you are gaming on a Ramdisk it's the best feeling ever knowing it's faster than any SSD out there you can buy. Memory > SSD access speeds. Of course the only downside is if the power goes out the data is wiped but if you got one of these babies and it'll keep the computer running during a power outage and long enough to put it into sleep mode until the power comes back.

APC Smart-UPS C 1440VA with LCD (120V

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=887781&gclid=CKSnxbOJ8ckCFQ2VfgodtuUNvQ&Q=&ap=y&m=Y&is=REG&A=details

GOG said that they don't support Galaxy on XP but that presently they weren't making it intentionally incompatible either, so it may work but not be officially supported. The same is true with a number of games in the catalogue, where they do not list older versions of Windows as being supported - but it might work or be able to be made to work for some people.

There's a delineation between what "supported" and "might possibly work" means of course. :)

Yes, but there is also quite a difference between "require" and "support". If Galaxy page note will be "supports Windows 7 or newer" it would be more understandable for me.

Yup, as far as I can tell - 1.1.12 still runs fine on my XP

Then their official stance is that you need Windows 7 for Galaxy, which is perfectly clear. :) If it happens to work on something older, it is purely a coincidence rather than intentional. :)

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_upcoming_version_043_of_reactos_will_support_gog_galaxy

The upcoming version 0.4.3 of ReactOS will support GOG Galaxy

Well, Galaxy stopped working for me on Windows XP. I was able to use it fine since release, but now I get an error for QueryWorkingSetEx in PSAPI.DLL. Tried to uninstall and reinstall and the same thing happens. Too bad, the machine I use XP on is my office computer and I can't upgrade the OS. Bummer.

Its big fail to not support it on WinXP.