dual booting

[Guest]

I know this has been posted before but I still cant get it. I have windows
xp on 40 gig hd that came with new computer. I have windows 98 on my old hd.
I added my old hd and config master and slave with jumpers and cable.
Changed bios to auto-detect didnt work. Changed to cable select still doesnt
work. The old hard drive is showing up when xp starts as drive f. So how do
I get both drives to show when I boot so I can choose which one I want to use

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You can't the way you are doing it.

A dual boot system is not a system in which you add a new operating system
by hooking up another hard drive that has Win98 files on it.

To have a dual boot system, you must start with Win98 installed on drive C:.
Then you must install (install, not add) Windows XP on a second partition
(or drive).

Win98 has no idea what XP is (Win98 came first). But XP knows what Win98 is
so when you install XP on a system that already has Win98 on it, XP detects
the Win98 partition and sets up a dual boot screen and provides for hiding
XP from Win98 so that Win98 doesn't try to "repair" that "other" partition
when Win98 is running.

If you try to install Win98 second it will just corrupt the XP system
because there was no XP when Win98 was written. It assumes XP is something
that needs to be fixed. If Win98 can see the XP partition, it will corrupt
it.

Having said that, there are third party programs like Partition Magic and
System Commander that can sort some of this out. I prefer another way,
which is to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 on XP to run Win98 as just another
window on my XP desktop. That way I can run both XP and Win98 at the same
time and exchange information between them. In a dual boot setup you can
only run one OS at any one time and you have to restart the computer to
change between them.

Whether you can take advantage of VPC 2004 depends on how much memory you
have. I would not try it with less than 384MB of ram and I think 512MB is
much better.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Since Win98 was installed as C, adding it to the existing boot will not work
as it is in the wrong position. A quick and simple fix is to use a boot
manager like BootIT NG so that it can swap the positions (not physically,
but it tricks the system into believing this) and boot one installation or
the other.

If you are familiar with your system BIOS, you could also swap them back and
forth each time, just set the desired system as the primary bootable device.

Otherwise, you will need to make several major changes. It will require
reinstalling one or the other of the operating systems so that it sees
itself as the slave drive and associated drive letter. It may also mean
repartitioning, as currently your WinXP system is likely using NTFS. Since
Win98 cannot load from an NTFS drive, it would have to be converted to
FAT32. Without a tool like Partition Magic (the only one I know of that
claims to be able to make this conversion), the only way to do this is to
start from scratch. You would need to reinstall Win98 to the slave drive,
then install WinXP to a FAT32 formatted primary.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[William B. Lurie]

Hi,

Since Win98 was installed as C, adding it to the existing boot will not work
as it is in the wrong position. A quick and simple fix is to use a boot
manager like BootIT NG so that it can swap the positions (not physically,
but it tricks the system into believing this) and boot one installation or
the other.

If you are familiar with your system BIOS, you could also swap them back and
forth each time, just set the desired system as the primary bootable device.

Otherwise, you will need to make several major changes. It will require
reinstalling one or the other of the operating systems so that it sees
itself as the slave drive and associated drive letter. It may also mean
repartitioning, as currently your WinXP system is likely using NTFS. Since
Win98 cannot load from an NTFS drive, it would have to be converted to
FAT32. Without a tool like Partition Magic (the only one I know of that
claims to be able to make this conversion), the only way to do this is to
start from scratch. You would need to reinstall Win98 to the slave drive,
then install WinXP to a FAT32 formatted primary.

Let me as a frustrated non-expert add a few comments, although Rick has
been quite clear and explicit. I have found that it is extremely easy
to have two hard drives, with one OS on each, and interrupt the boot-up
by hitting "Del", and then making minor changes in the BIOS, to direct
the boot-up to whichever hard drive I want. One is set (jumpered) as
"Master" and the other as "Slave", and they operate one at a time. They
can be XP or 98 or 95, independently.

Partition Magic is a flexible, easy-to-use tool for managing multiple
hard drives and multiple partitions. It will even copy a complete
partition from one drive to another. What I haven't been able to do
reproducibly is copy a complete partition containing an OS and files,
from one drive to another, and then be able to run the clone
independently as a Single Drive; as a Slave, yes, but not as a single
or master. My many posts, and many answers, attest to that. I'm still
trying.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

One way around all of this is virtualization with Virtual PC 2004, VMware,
or SVista. Virtualization has really changed how one can do multiple OS's.