Win98/Win2000Prof dual boot

[Alan]

My machine had a Win98/Win2000 Professional dual boot.
Then I use FDISK to DELETE all partitions and RECREATE partitios (C, D, E),
format the harddisk and installed Win2000 Professional only on C drive.

When I finished the installation and reboot, I still got the options of
Win98, why ? And how do I get rid of this option ?

I will then install WinXP to dual boot very soon.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dave Patrick]

You'll need to delete the options you want removed from the boot.ini, it's a
system, hidden file in the root of the system partition. So you'll need to
show-all-files, hidden, system in Explorer. You should end up with something
like this (below). The timeout value is not functional when there is only
one startup choice.

The line your going to remove from the boot.ini will be similar to
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect


--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect


:
| My machine had a Win98/Win2000 Professional dual boot.
| Then I use FDISK to DELETE all partitions and RECREATE partitios (C, D,
E),
| format the harddisk and installed Win2000 Professional only on C drive.
|
| When I finished the installation and reboot, I still got the options of
| Win98, why ? And how do I get rid of this option ?
|
| I will then install WinXP to dual boot very soon.
|
| Thanks in advance.
|
|

 

[Dan]

Edit boot.ini in notepad. Be sure the remaining partition/os is set as
default & remove the other(s).

Dan

 

[WoofWoof]

Both responses to this answered the "how" but not the "why" .... and
I'm really curious about the "why". Is there something left in the
boot sector/mbr that fdisk doesn't clean up? Would an fdisk/mbr after
re-partitioning have fixed it?

 

[Jetro]

If a valid bootsector was found setup saves it before replacing its code
with W2k version and adds the appropriate record to the boot.ini file. The
same behavior could be observed during in-place upgrade or reinstall when
setup adds its own line to the boot.ini with timeout 0.

 

[Dan]

Here's a somewhat related question (I think). I have a dual boot, 2 hdd
system. Recently, I re-formatted one of the 2 drives & reinstalled
win2k on it. To my surprise, when I 1st ran this new install, some
items remained, such as the user info under "documents settings" folder
of the former login name. Other files remained as well. How is this
possible, if the drive was formatted? Boot.ini does reside on the disk
in question.

Dan

 

[WoofWoof]

If a valid bootsector was found setup saves it before replacing its code
with W2k version and adds the appropriate record to the boot.ini file. The
same behavior could be observed during in-place upgrade or reinstall when
setup adds its own line to the boot.ini with timeout 0.

OK, I can see that, but the original poster said that he fdisked to
completely remove all partitions, then repartitioned and formatted.
Why would there be a valid bootsector left for a subsequent Win2K
install to find? That was really the point of my question.

 

[Andy]

This can happen if you do: format c: /s

 

[Jetro]

Exactly, he repartitioned a disk using W98 utility 'fdisk', and probably
formatted it using W98 'format'. If MBR wasn't found, then fdisk created
one; If there was an old MBR, fdisk didn't re-write it, and if any partition
was marked as Active fdisk made it as well.