Dual Booting with Two Hard Drives

[bpazolli]

I have a 6GB IDE hard drive pulled from an iMac, I want to install
Windows 98 on it and have a dual boot configuration.

I have a HP 720a:
1.6GHz Pentium 4
512MB Memory
60GB Harddrive (1st one NTFS)
CD burner
DVD burner
nVidia GeForce2 MX400
Built-in on motherboard (Sound, Ethernet, USB 1.1)
Pinnicle PCTV Card
USB 2.0 Card
Running Windows XP Home

Will I experience any problems running this hardware on Windows 98. I
want at least cd, sound, ethernet and graphics(3d accelerated)
functioning. I am not prepared to loose all my data or reinstall xp.
The main problem as I understand it is other then possible
incompatibilities is that I want to put 98 on after xp. I have another
IBM Aptive EQ2 running Windows 98 if that will help.

Thanks,
Ben Pazolli

 

[Brian A.]

The hardware looks fine, aside from possibly USB 2.0 drivers for 98 that you may need to acquire from the manufacturer.
As well, yes, you will have some alterations to perform when installing any older OS after a newer OS is installed. Proper install procedures call for installs of older to newer in dual/multi boot environments.

For some help and info see:
http://thpc.info/dualboot.html

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a 6GB IDE hard drive pulled from an iMac, I want to install
Windows 98 on it and have a dual boot configuration.

I have a HP 720a:
1.6GHz Pentium 4
512MB Memory
60GB Harddrive (1st one NTFS)
CD burner
DVD burner
nVidia GeForce2 MX400
Built-in on motherboard (Sound, Ethernet, USB 1.1)
Pinnicle PCTV Card
USB 2.0 Card
Running Windows XP Home

Will I experience any problems running this hardware on Windows 98. I
want at least cd, sound, ethernet and graphics(3d accelerated)
functioning. I am not prepared to loose all my data or reinstall xp.
The main problem as I understand it is other then possible
incompatibilities is that I want to put 98 on after xp. I have another
IBM Aptive EQ2 running Windows 98 if that will help.

Thanks,
Ben Pazolli

You cannot do this with the native Windows boot loader because
your active partition on your first drive uses NTFS which cannot
be accessed by the Win98 boot files. To make it work you must
install a third-party boot manager, e.g. XOSL
(http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm). I would do this:
- Install the 6 GByte disk as a slave.
- Create a 6 GByte FAT32 partition.
- Install Win98 in this partition.
- Install XOSL in this partition.
- Add WinXP and Win98 to the XOSL boot menu.

In this way there is no danger of altering the WinXP boot environment.

 

[bpazolli]

Installed the hard drive. Formatted it Fat 32. XP recognizes it. Tried
installing 98 but then it gives messages about non-system files or
something, and asks to delete them. Though not forcing me. At this
point I decided to step back and exit setup. Is it safe to continue,
what do I need to do.

Thanks,
Ben Pazolli

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Installed the hard drive. Formatted it Fat 32. XP recognizes it. Tried
installing 98 but then it gives messages about non-system files or
something, and asks to delete them. Though not forcing me. At this
point I decided to step back and exit setup. Is it safe to continue,
what do I need to do.

Thanks,
Ben Pazolli

To be on the safe side you should now remove the
WinXP disk and make the new disk the primary
master disk. You can now install Win98. Later on
you can restore the original configuration and install
your chosen boot manager.

 

[bpazolli]

Well I am slowly making progress, I installed Win 98 as described above
and had trouble getting the integrated ethernet working. I decided to
make sure xp still worked so I reinstalled the main hard drive. Too my
shock I got a sort of cryptic "Can't find autocheck program" error.
After a couple of restarts, I pulled out a boot disk with an MBR save &
restore program that I had used before I started messing around with
the computer, restored the MBR on that disk and everything is back to
normal. I now believe that I probably forgot to unhide the xp partition
in the partition manager I am using. I havn't been able to restart into
98 yet but I only tried hiding the xp partition again and unhiding the
98 partition and it tried to boot up into xp. I have many ideas on how
to solve that problem myself including installing a boot loader as
suggested, but it is late and I will wait for another day or even
weekend before I tackle the problem again. The important things for
other people reading this and wanting to try it(I don't suggest it
until I report more success) but whatever you do with dual booting you
should save your MBR I used a free program from
www.allthatcounts.com/comp/mbr.htm . My brother once installed linux on
this computer and I lost my Secret Partitions (It wasn't actually gone
but the program in xp wouldn't find it as it looked at a specific
place", finally he uninstalled it and it is my understanding that I
could of got my secret partition back if he had of saved the MBR, in
the end cost $30 AUD for the cds from HP (probably was a good thing to
get anyway). It is just worth it, when you get a cryptic message like I
did, I had something to fall back on and as a result got it working.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I have a 6GB IDE hard drive pulled from an iMac, I want to install
Windows 98 on it and have a dual boot configuration.

[.........]
Running Windows XP Home

Pegasus has the software solution - install Win98 separately,
and then ammend the WinXP's boot.ini file to include the
Win98 installation as a boot option, OR install a 3rd party
boot manager. But... that guarantees you'll be back with a
couple more questions about how to do that.

Since your OSes are on different HDs, the easiest no-brainer
dual-boot is to use the BIOS. Your BIOS *probably* has the
option to adjust the HD boot order, i.e. set which HD will be
given control for the boot process. If so (check your owner's
manual), just re-set that HD boot order each time you want to
boot to a different HD. Since your OSes are on separate HDs,
by selecting the HD to boot, you'll be selecting which OS to
boot.

*TimDaniels*

 

[bpazolli]

Success, I have now got my dual boot configuration working. All with
not touching windows xp and having it with NTFS. I used some utilities
I got with a PC User Magazine, Paragon Partition Manager with Boot
Manager (http://www.partition-manager.com/). Here is what I did.
1) Install 2nd Hard Disk as slave
2) Format to FAT-32 by booting into Partition Manager
3) Boot into MBR Save as linked above and save MBR of Both
4) Disconnect cables from 1st harddrive
5) Set 2nd Hard drive to Master
6) Install Win 98
7) Reconnect 1st Harddrive
8) Set 1st harddrive to Master
9) Set 2nd harddrive to slave
10) Activate Bootmanager
11) Checking settings of Boot Manager but the defaults should be fine
12) Restart and enjoy dual booting

There may be a quicker alternative. You should be able to use free
alternatives such as FDisk for Partition Manager and XOSL for Boot
Manager, but I havn't tried it nor do I intend to.

Now I am enjoying games such as Le Mans 24 Hour. Just for interest I
did this dual boot on my HP 720a without retail XP CDs.

Thank You Very Much,
Ben Pazolli

Special thanks to Pegasus

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Success, I have now got my dual boot configuration working. All with
not touching windows xp and having it with NTFS. I used some utilities
I got with a PC User Magazine, Paragon Partition Manager with Boot
Manager (http://www.partition-manager.com/). Here is what I did.
1) Install 2nd Hard Disk as slave
2) Format to FAT-32 by booting into Partition Manager
3) Boot into MBR Save as linked above and save MBR of Both
4) Disconnect cables from 1st harddrive
5) Set 2nd Hard drive to Master
6) Install Win 98
7) Reconnect 1st Harddrive
8) Set 1st harddrive to Master
9) Set 2nd harddrive to slave
10) Activate Bootmanager
11) Checking settings of Boot Manager but the defaults should be fine
12) Restart and enjoy dual booting

There may be a quicker alternative. You should be able to use free
alternatives such as FDisk for Partition Manager and XOSL for Boot
Manager, but I havn't tried it nor do I intend to.

Now I am enjoying games such as Le Mans 24 Hour. Just for interest I
did this dual boot on my HP 720a without retail XP CDs.

Did you try using the BIOS to switch between HDs?
It wouldn't have needed *any* new software or file
editing..

*TimDaniels*