Easiest way to boot between to hard drives.

[Wayne]

My friend has an e-machine approx. 2 years old. He has windows 98 on the
secondary drive and windows xp on the primary drive. What would he need to do
to be able to boot up from either drive the easiest way without going in and
out of the BIOS each time? Thanks

 

[Anteaus]

http://www.ranish.com/

 

[Wayne]

Do I see a little sarcasm here, or what?

 

[John John (MVP)]

Get him to install the Recovery Console. It will automatically create
the necessary bootsect.dos file for Windows 98 and it will add it to the
boot.ini file. Once you are satisfied that the Windows 98 installation
is properly added to the boot.ini file and that it can be successfully
booted you can easily uninstall the Recovery Console and remove it from
the boot.ini menu.

John

 

[Brian A.]

My friend has an e-machine approx. 2 years old. He has windows 98 on the
secondary drive and windows xp on the primary drive. What would he need to do
to be able to boot up from either drive the easiest way without going in and
out of the BIOS each time? Thanks
--
Wayne

http://thpc.info/how/editbootini.html

--

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

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

 

[Wayne]

John, are you talking about the recovery console on the windows XP disc.? Do
you know of any website that will give a little more information on how to do
this? Thanks. Thank you also Brian.

 

[HeyBub]

http://www.ranish.com/

I saw a hatchet for sale on eBay billed as "the very hatchet used by young
George Washington to chop down his father's cherry tree!"

The description went on "... during the intervening 300-odd years, the
hatchet has had its handle replaced nine times and its head replaced twice,
but other than that, it's the original hatchet."

 

[Wayne]

Thanks Brian, and to the rest of the folks who answered my question. It is
much appreciated.

 

[Anna]

John, are you talking about the recovery console on the windows XP disc.?
Do
you know of any website that will give a little more information on how to
do
this? Thanks. Thank you also Brian.

Wayne:
First of all, multibooting Win98 & WinXP can be a bit more complicated than
invoking some simple commands in the XP Recovery Console and modifying the
boot.ini file.

We're assuming, of course, that your friend has good & sufficient reasons
for working with a Win98 installation. Presumably he needs to use some
programs/applications that can only work in an Win98 environment, right?

All things considered, it might even be best to continue his practice of
accessing the BIOS to change the boot priority order so that he can boot to
either HDD containing the two OS. On the other hand if he has is a
more-or-less constant need to boot to one or the other OS I suppose he finds
it somewhat onerous to continually access the BIOS so it would be best to
create a multiboot configuration.

If that be the case it really would be wise for you and/or he to Google for
"multiboot win98 and winxp" where you'll be pointed to a number of websites
that deal with the ins & outs of this process. In particular, access...
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

Actually our preferred method of creating a multiboot configuration is
through the use of a removable HDD. Through this process the internal HDD
contains one OS; the removable HDD contains the other OS. The systems are
physically separate from each other and each OS can be easily booted to
through an ON-OFF switch on the mobile rack that contains the removable HDD.
But in order to use a removable HDD one needs a desktop PC with an available
(vacant) 5 1/4" bay to house the mobile rack. The entire process is similar
to installing an optical drive. But you haven't indicated whether this
eMachines PC is a desktop machine with an available 5 1/4" bay so this may
not be feasible in your friend's case.
Anna

 

[Mike]

My friend has an e-machine approx. 2 years old. He has windows 98 on the
secondary drive and windows xp on the primary drive. What would he need
to do to be able to boot up from either drive the easiest way without
going in and out of the BIOS each time? Thanks

Using the BIOS to choose the boot order is better described as the safer
way but is at best a somewhat clumsy way to go about a mutli-boot. Whether
there's an OS on the master, slave, wherever, is irrelevant. It's something
called the MBR (Master Boot Record) that controls what boots from where.
With Windows controlling the MBR it's a complete pain in the ass to set up
for multi-boot for different OS's on either the same drive or different
drives. At least I never got the darn thing to work right doing it Windows.
(At present I multi-boot three OS's on two drives and use something called
Super Grub. In theory, you need to set up the MBR so that when your
computer boots up you get a text menu coming up just after all the POST
stuff that shows you a list of OS's and you can select one to boot up with.

However, messing around with the MBR is not for the feint of heart or the
clueless. You could seriously trash things playing around with that.

Mike

 

[Wayne]

Thanks for the information Mike. This is for a friend of mine so I will pass
this along to him.

 

[Mike]

Thanks for the information Mike. This is for a friend of mine so I will
pass this along to him.

Hey Wayne,

Now if I could figure out why my reply showed up two days after I sent it.
Then again, I am on Verizon.

It should be noted that Super Grub is more or less for Linux OS's, but it's
damn handy to have around. I haven't looked into it but you can be fairly
certain that there are Windows type programs that will do the same thing.

 

[Wayne]

Thanks Mike. I will do some more checking. I don't have any idea why your
reply showed up two days late. Whow! that is not good.