Stupot said:
I have put a second drive in a friends machine as she wanted to use Win98
and her copy of XP. The new Drive with XP is the only one that boots up. yet
the other drive can be accessed through windows explorer.
The Bios has auto detected both drives, master and slave.
I have never had this problem before. Can anybody help?
PS: Tiny had glued all the IDE cables to the MB and drives. Grrr! No wonder
they went bust.
That isn't all that difficult to do ...now that you have unglued the
drive connectors ;-)
The easiest way is to use a third party boot manager. If you want to do
without a third party boot manager it is still fairly easy to add
Windows 98 to the XP boot loader. I assume that Windows XP is installed
on an NTFS formated drive.
Things to keep in mind:
1- You cannot boot Windows 98 from an NTFS partition. No amount of
fiddling with the boot.ini file on an NTFS partition will make Windows
98 boot off of it.
2- Windows 98 is a root-based operating system, it does not boot from a
boot.ini ARC path. It does not boot on a scsi(X) or multi(X) ARC path.
An earlier suggestion to add Windows 98 to a
multi(X)disk(Y)rdisk(Z)partition(W)\<win_dir> line will not work. To
call a root-based operating system a line to the root path of the active
partition (C:\) is added to the boot.ini file. A boot.ini file to boot
an NT based operating system and a root-based operating system will
typically look something like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP"
/fastdetect
C:\="Previous MS-DOS OS"
3- Windows 98 boots on a boot sector of its own. In a dual boot
configuration with Windows NT/2000/XP using ntldr as the boot manager
the Windows 98 boot sector is recreated to a file (Bootsect.dos) and
when selecting the Windows 98 boot option ntldr reads this file and then
"mimics" a Windows 98 boot sector for it to boot on.
4- To restore or revert to the Windows 98 boot sector on a drive, boot
with a Windows 98 startup boot disk and issue the sys c: command. To
restore or revert to the Windows XP boot sector boot to the Recovery
Console and issue the fixboot command.
To add a Windows 98 hard disk to a computer that already contains a disk
with an NT type operating system do the following:
Before you begin boot to the XP installation and create an Emergency
Floppy Boot floppy boot disk.
Format a floppy diskette using Windows XP. DO NOT use Windows 98 to
create the diskette, it will fail to boot XP if you do!
format a: /u
Copy these files from the root directory of the XP system partition to
the diskette:
boot.ini
ntldr
NTDETECT.COM
These files will be required later on to do the actual dual boot setup.
By default these files are hidden read-only system files, you may need
to unhide them. This diskette can also be used to start Windows XP in
an emergency.
Turn off the computer, open the case and place the disk which will host
Windows 98 on the master position on the primary controller on the
motherboard. In your case, put it where the XP is currently connected.
Place the XP disk in a slave relationship to the Windows 98 disk or
place it on a different controller altogether. Once everything is
finished with your dual boot setup the Windows 98 disk will be the boot
device when the computer boots. You may want to keep the Windows XP
disk disconnected while you install Windows 98, this will avoid drive
mix ups and mistakes.
Proceed to install Windows 98 on the primary disk. Once properly
installed and after you are satisfied that Windows 98 boots properly
create a bootsect.dos file for it. To create the file use the DEBUG
command. Start an MS-DOS Prompt and navigate to the root of the System
drive (C:\) and issue the following commands, pressing enter after each:
debug
L 100 2 0 1
N C:\BOOTSECT.DOS
R BX
0
R CX
200
W
Q
That will create the file. Exit Windows 98 and reboot to make sure
all is ok with Windows 98 and that the file C:\bootsect.dos is present.
Now (while still in Windows 98) copy the files boot.ini, ntldr and
NTDETECT.COM (that you saved on your floppy diskette earlier) to the
root of the C:\ drive. Being that the location of the Windows XP disk
will have changed you will have to edit the ARC path accordingly in the
boot.ini file. You will also have to add the root-based Windows 98
entry to the file. Use notepad and open the boot.ini file. The rdisk
value for the XP drive will have changed so these changes have to be
reflected in the file. To be on the safe side instead of editing the
location we can add additional paths and later use the msconfig utility
to remove invalid entries.
[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP RD1"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP RD2"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP RD3"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\="Windows 98"
Note: The rdisk(0) line has been removed as that position is now
occupied by the Windows 98 hard disk.
Save the file and shut down the computer. If the Windows XP drive was
disconnected during the above procedure reconnect it, DO NOT change the
location of the Windows 98 drive!
Boot to the Windows XP Recovery Console and issue the FIXBOOT command on
the drive hosting the Windows 98 installation. Use the MAP command to
view the disks and partitions on the computer. To verify the ARC path
of the Windows XP installation you can use the MAP ARC command.
Earlier we copied and edited the boot.ini file but you can also use the
Recovery Console's BOOTCFG /REBUILD command to build the boot.ini
file but the command does not add the Windows 98 entry to the file.
Make sure that you issue the commands and do the operations on the
Windows 98 drive, not the Windows XP drive. Once done exit the Recovery
Console and boot the computer to the primary disk and you should now
have a dual boot system using the ntldr boot loader.
John
