Dual Booting

[Bob]

My set-up at present is a dual boot system with win 98 on one partition
and win xp on another. On boot up I am offered the choice by winxp boot
manager to start either system.
This has been working fine until recently. It appears that something in
win98 system has become corrupted and it does not work very well. My
idea would be to delete win98 altogether and just add the space to the
partition that contains winxp or get rid of the second partition. I
don't really need win98 any more, I would be quite satisfied with just
winxp.
I should add that I have Acronis Partition Expert installed in win98. I
have been uninstalling programs from win98 as I get them up and running
on winxp and transferring the space to the winxp partition
Is what I am thinking feasible or am I likely to muck up my winxp
installation. And what will happen to the winxp boot manager?

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Bob

 

[Malke]

My set-up at present is a dual boot system with win 98 on one
partition
and win xp on another. On boot up I am offered the choice by winxp
boot manager to start either system.
This has been working fine until recently. It appears that something
in
win98 system has become corrupted and it does not work very well. My
idea would be to delete win98 altogether and just add the space to the
partition that contains winxp or get rid of the second partition. I
don't really need win98 any more, I would be quite satisfied with just
winxp.
I should add that I have Acronis Partition Expert installed in win98.
I have been uninstalling programs from win98 as I get them up and
running on winxp and transferring the space to the winxp partition
Is what I am thinking feasible or am I likely to muck up my winxp
installation. And what will happen to the winxp boot manager?

You can't really just add the space to the XP partition without then
needing to redo XP. But there really isn't any need to - the Win98
partition will be available to you to save things on.

From XP, make sure you can see all hidden files (Folder Options>View).
Then - still in XP - go to the Win98 partition and delete everything
except the XP boot files (boot.ini, ntldr, Ntdetect.com). Don't try to
delete everything in one go because Windows doesn't do well with huge
deletions like that. Of course, you will back up any data you need from
Win98 first.

So now you've got nothing on the formerly-Win98 partition except XP's
boot files. Do Start>Run>msconfig [enter]. Now you'll have the System
Configuration Utility. On the BOOT.INI tab, you'll see a button to
click that says "check all boot paths). It will find that there are no
longer Win98 boot files and fix your boot.ini. Or you can hand-edit
your boot.ini file in Notepad to remove the reference to Win98. Now
your XP installation will have two partitions - the C: which you can
use to store data or install programs on if you need more space and
whatever drive letter your XP install is on.

Malke

 

[John John]

Getting rid of Windows 98 is fairly simple. Boot to your XP
installation and remove the Windows 98 folder then edit the boot.ini
file accordingly. To edit the boot.ini file click on Start>Run and
enter the msconfig command. In msconfig click on the BOOT.INI tab and
check all boot paths then remove the invalid paths.

I don't know how you setup your dual boot, did you use Acronis and give
each operating system its own system partition? Or did you do this the
Microsoft way, did you install Windows 98 then Windows XP as per
Microsoft instruction?

Depending on the answers to the above questions, if you are sure that
there is nothing that you want to keep on the Windows 98 drive/partition
you can delete everything on the Windows 98 partition EXCEPT (some of)
the files in the root directory. To be safe leave the files in the C:\
root intact. Regardless of how you set up the multi-boot all the files
on the Windows 98 partition except those in the root are safe to delete.
If you dual installed using the Microsoft method you will not be able
to merge the 2 partitions, the Windows 98 partition is the System
Partition for both operating systems and it must remain, but you will be
able to slide some of the free space to the XP partition. You can just
delete the Windows 98 stuff and use the partition as it is for data storage.

John

 

[Bob]

Getting rid of Windows 98 is fairly simple. Boot to your XP
installation and remove the Windows 98 folder then edit the boot.ini
file accordingly. To edit the boot.ini file click on Start>Run and
enter the msconfig command. In msconfig click on the BOOT.INI tab and
check all boot paths then remove the invalid paths.

I don't know how you setup your dual boot, did you use Acronis and give
each operating system its own system partition? Or did you do this the
Microsoft way, did you install Windows 98 then Windows XP as per
Microsoft instruction?

Depending on the answers to the above questions, if you are sure that
there is nothing that you want to keep on the Windows 98 drive/partition
you can delete everything on the Windows 98 partition EXCEPT (some of)
the files in the root directory. To be safe leave the files in the C:\
root intact. Regardless of how you set up the multi-boot all the files
on the Windows 98 partition except those in the root are safe to delete.
If you dual installed using the Microsoft method you will not be able
to merge the 2 partitions, the Windows 98 partition is the System
Partition for both operating systems and it must remain, but you will be
able to slide some of the free space to the XP partition. You can just
delete the Windows 98 stuff and use the partition as it is for data
storage.

John

Hello John
I initially had win98 installed on C
I then used Acronis to partition into C & D leaving win 98 unharmed.
I then installed winxp from within win98, Start, run, etc. (Winxp
refused to install from dos.)
During installation I was asked if I wanted to install winxp on the
empty partition D, which I did. Then winxp automatically set up the boot
manager.
I realise that I could have simply used the winxp partition facility but
not being too sure what the results would be I did it my way (no pun
intended) It all worked very easily and I am hoping my deletion of win98
will be the same.

Bob

 

[John John]

I initially had win98 installed on C
I then used Acronis to partition into C & D leaving win 98 unharmed.
I then installed winxp from within win98, Start, run, etc. (Winxp
refused to install from dos.)
During installation I was asked if I wanted to install winxp on the
empty partition D, which I did. Then winxp automatically set up the boot
manager.
I realise that I could have simply used the winxp partition facility but
not being too sure what the results would be I did it my way (no pun
intended) It all worked very easily and I am hoping my deletion of win98
will be the same.

You will not be able to remove the Windows 98 partition. It is the
common System Partition and the XP boot files reside there. The only
easy way around that would be to completely reinstall XP on the System
Partition.

John

 

[Bob]

Bob wrote:

My set-up at present is a dual boot system with win 98 on one
partition
and win xp on another. On boot up I am offered the choice by winxp
boot manager to start either system.
This has been working fine until recently. It appears that something
in
win98 system has become corrupted and it does not work very well. My
idea would be to delete win98 altogether and just add the space to the
partition that contains winxp or get rid of the second partition. I
don't really need win98 any more, I would be quite satisfied with just
winxp.
I should add that I have Acronis Partition Expert installed in win98.
I have been uninstalling programs from win98 as I get them up and
running on winxp and transferring the space to the winxp partition
Is what I am thinking feasible or am I likely to muck up my winxp
installation. And what will happen to the winxp boot manager?

You can't really just add the space to the XP partition without then
needing to redo XP. But there really isn't any need to - the Win98
partition will be available to you to save things on.

From XP, make sure you can see all hidden files (Folder Options>View).
Then - still in XP - go to the Win98 partition and delete everything
except the XP boot files (boot.ini, ntldr, Ntdetect.com). Don't try to
delete everything in one go because Windows doesn't do well with huge
deletions like that. Of course, you will back up any data you need from
Win98 first.

So now you've got nothing on the formerly-Win98 partition except XP's
boot files. Do Start>Run>msconfig [enter]. Now you'll have the System
Configuration Utility. On the BOOT.INI tab, you'll see a button to
click that says "check all boot paths). It will find that there are no
longer Win98 boot files and fix your boot.ini. Or you can hand-edit
your boot.ini file in Notepad to remove the reference to Win98. Now
your XP installation will have two partitions - the C: which you can
use to store data or install programs on if you need more space and
whatever drive letter your XP install is on.

Malke

Where exactly do these three files reside. I don't seem to be able to
find them on C:\ I have opened all files for viewing , I mean show all
hidden files. Are they within a folder?

Bob

 

[Malke]

Where exactly do these three files reside. I don't seem to be able to
find them on C:\ I have opened all files for viewing , I mean show
all
hidden files. Are they within a folder?

Bob

In XP go to the Control Panel and open the Folder Options applet. Under
the View tab there are three boxes concerning hidden files. Uncheck all
of them, Apply & OK. The XP boot files are at the root of C:\.

Malke

 

[Bob]

Bob wrote:




In XP go to the Control Panel and open the Folder Options applet. Under
the View tab there are three boxes concerning hidden files. Uncheck all
of them, Apply & OK. The XP boot files are at the root of C:\.

Malke

Got Them, thank you very much for you patience. I will let you know
how things work out when I have enough courage to do it.

Bob

 

[Bob]

You will not be able to remove the Windows 98 partition. It is the
common System Partition and the XP boot files reside there. The only
easy way around that would be to completely reinstall XP on the System
Partition.

John

Thank you all very much for your expert advice. I have not actually
done the deed yet, I am still working up the courage to do so! I will
post if it works OK

Bob

 

[John John]

You're welcome. I'm sure you can handle the task and that it will be a
piece of cake for you. Two things I want to point out to you:

1- Even if you completely screw this up and remove the wrong files or
damage the boot.ini file, that would be easy to fix. As both I and
Malke have said just don't remove the partition! If the pc were to not
reboot, you would just need to reboot the pc with the XP cd and go
through the motion as if you were installing XP. Then it would tell you
that it had detected the other installation. You would then use the
repair option and tell it to inspect and repair the startup environment.
Simple and straightforward thing to do. I'm sure you won't have to do
that because you have shown in your other posts that you are savvy
enough to do the task like a pro.

2- In one of your other post you said: "I realise that I could have
simply used the winxp partition facility but not being too sure what
the results would be I did it my way (no pun intended)..." You did it
the right way! Using the XP partition tool would have completely
destroyed the Windows 98 partition. The only way it could have resized
the partition would have been to delete the existing partition then
create 2 new ones, it would have fdisk'ed the drive.

So there you go, you're a smart cookie! I have full confidence that you
will easily remove Windows 98.

John

 

[Bob]

You're welcome. I'm sure you can handle the task and that it will be a
piece of cake for you. Two things I want to point out to you:

1- Even if you completely screw this up and remove the wrong files or
damage the boot.ini file, that would be easy to fix. As both I and
Malke have said just don't remove the partition! If the pc were to not
reboot, you would just need to reboot the pc with the XP cd and go
through the motion as if you were installing XP. Then it would tell you
that it had detected the other installation. You would then use the
repair option and tell it to inspect and repair the startup environment.
Simple and straightforward thing to do. I'm sure you won't have to do
that because you have shown in your other posts that you are savvy
enough to do the task like a pro.

2- In one of your other post you said: "I realise that I could have
simply used the winxp partition facility but not being too sure what
the results would be I did it my way (no pun intended)..." You did it
the right way! Using the XP partition tool would have completely
destroyed the Windows 98 partition. The only way it could have resized
the partition would have been to delete the existing partition then
create 2 new ones, it would have fdisk'ed the drive.

So there you go, you're a smart cookie! I have full confidence that you
will easily remove Windows 98.

John

Well thanks for the accolade, I will post the results. I still have a
few of my programs to install in winxp before I finally get rid of them
from the win98 partition.

Bob

 

[Bob]

You're welcome. I'm sure you can handle the task and that it will be a
piece of cake for you. Two things I want to point out to you:

1- Even if you completely screw this up and remove the wrong files or
damage the boot.ini file, that would be easy to fix. As both I and
Malke have said just don't remove the partition! If the pc were to not
reboot, you would just need to reboot the pc with the XP cd and go
through the motion as if you were installing XP. Then it would tell you
that it had detected the other installation. You would then use the
repair option and tell it to inspect and repair the startup environment.
Simple and straightforward thing to do. I'm sure you won't have to do
that because you have shown in your other posts that you are savvy
enough to do the task like a pro.

2- In one of your other post you said: "I realise that I could have
simply used the winxp partition facility but not being too sure what
the results would be I did it my way (no pun intended)..." You did it
the right way! Using the XP partition tool would have completely
destroyed the Windows 98 partition. The only way it could have resized
the partition would have been to delete the existing partition then
create 2 new ones, it would have fdisk'ed the drive.

So there you go, you're a smart cookie! I have full confidence that you
will easily remove Windows 98.

John

John
One more question for you. It was suggested to me that before I
actually delete anything from C:\ that I rename the system files and
make sure everything still works on XP. So,is it sufficient simply to
put .old on the end?

Bob

 

[John John]

?? What system files? Do you mean ntldr, NTDETECT.COM, boot.ini? I
don't think that you don't want to rename those. You can copy them to a
diskette if you want, in case you need them to repair something gone awry.

For peace of mind you might want to make a boot diskette for the pc.
Then you will know that in the event of a boot failure you can still
boot the pc. Go here: http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/ and make
yourself a boot diskette then try it to see if it works, stick the
diskette in the drive and when the pc boots go in the BIOS or use the
boot options key and set the pc to boot to diskette first. After you
are at ease knowing that the boot diskette works you can then do the
Windows 98 removal from the partition.

Post again if you have any further questions.

Regards;

John

 

[Bob]

?? What system files? Do you mean ntldr, NTDETECT.COM, boot.ini? I
don't think that you don't want to rename those. You can copy them to a
diskette if you want, in case you need them to repair something gone awry.

For peace of mind you might want to make a boot diskette for the pc.
Then you will know that in the event of a boot failure you can still
boot the pc. Go here: http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/ and make
yourself a boot diskette then try it to see if it works, stick the
diskette in the drive and when the pc boots go in the BIOS or use the
boot options key and set the pc to boot to diskette first. After you
are at ease knowing that the boot diskette works you can then do the
Windows 98 removal from the partition.

Post again if you have any further questions.

Regards;

John

John

Just me being a bit scared of something I haven't done before, I will
make the boot disk and go ahead. Thanks again!

Bob

 

[John John]

Once again, you're welcome. When you boot with that boot diskette you
will see interesting information about your computer and what starts
when you boot the machine.

John