HOWTO Remove Win98 from a Dual-Boot System with Win2K

[Adrian Herscu]

Hi all,

I have a computer with two hard-disks (HD1 and HD2):
HD1: Has one FAT32 partition and hosts a Win98 installation
HD2: Has four NTFS partitions and the first one hosts a Win2K installation

I want to completely remove the Win98 installation and of course use HD1
for other purposes (such as storing the pagefile.sys of Win2K).

I tried to find some article but most "dual boot" articles talk about
how to setup a dual-boot system, and those articles which talk about
removing Win98 do not seem to fit my situation.
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q285480/
http://www.petri.co.il/remove_windows_98.htm)

I am afraid that after following the described procedure I will remain
with an unbootable system.

Please help,
Adrian.

 

[Dave Patrick]

First create a boot disk and test for proper operation. For the floppy to
successfully boot Windows 2000 the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector.
Format a diskette (on a Windows 2000 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT
boot sector gets written to the floppy), and copy Windows 2000 versions of
ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a
correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot. Below is an example of
boot.ini. The default is to start the operating system located on the first
partition of the primary or first drive (drive0). Then drive0 partition 2
and so on.

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,2"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,2"

Then **format only** drive0 Then from the recovery console command line
issue the command;

fixboot

--

Regards,

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

:
| Hi all,
|
| I have a computer with two hard-disks (HD1 and HD2):
| HD1: Has one FAT32 partition and hosts a Win98 installation
| HD2: Has four NTFS partitions and the first one hosts a Win2K installation
|
| I want to completely remove the Win98 installation and of course use HD1
| for other purposes (such as storing the pagefile.sys of Win2K).
|
| I tried to find some article but most "dual boot" articles talk about
| how to setup a dual-boot system, and those articles which talk about
| removing Win98 do not seem to fit my situation.
| (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q285480/
| http://www.petri.co.il/remove_windows_98.htm)
|
| I am afraid that after following the described procedure I will remain
| with an unbootable system.
|
| Please help,
| Adrian.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi all,

I have a computer with two hard-disks (HD1 and HD2):
HD1: Has one FAT32 partition and hosts a Win98 installation
HD2: Has four NTFS partitions and the first one hosts a Win2K installation

I want to completely remove the Win98 installation and of course use HD1
for other purposes (such as storing the pagefile.sys of Win2K).

I tried to find some article but most "dual boot" articles talk about
how to setup a dual-boot system, and those articles which talk about
removing Win98 do not seem to fit my situation.
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q285480/
http://www.petri.co.il/remove_windows_98.htm)

I am afraid that after following the described procedure I will remain
with an unbootable system.

Please help,
Adrian.

Many people create a multibooting Win98/Win2000 installation
in a somewhat euphoric mood by placing Win2000 on a drive
other than C:, not realising that this sets the scene for some nice
little problems later on. Yours is one of them. There are two
issues you must resolve:
a) You must make Disk 2 bootable. This is easy.
b) You must maintain the system drive letter for Win2000.
This is much harder.

Make Disk 2 bootable
===============
- Boot into Win2000.
- Run diskmgr.msc (Start / Run) and make the system
partition of Disk 2 active.
- Copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
to the root of the Win2000 system partition on Disk 2.
- Run this command: notepad.exe d:\boot.ini and modify
the two strings so that they look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Maintain the System Drive Letter
======================
- Start a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd).
- Type set system and make a note of SystemRoot.
- Copy d:\WinNT\system32\userinit.exe to the
WinNT\system32 folder on your remaining drives on Disk 2.
You will, of course, have to make these folders.
- Turn off the machine.
- Remove the Win98 disk.
- Make the Win2000 disk the primary master disk.
- Boot into Win2000.
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK} and type set system.
I expect that the drive letter is different from what it was
above, probably C:. If it's the same as before, fine. If it is
not then you must change it immediately.
- Run regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices/
- Identify the key DosDevice: that has the incorrect system
drive letter.
- Rename it to what it was before (probably \DosDevices\D
If there is some other value with this letter, delete it.
- Reboot the machine.

Win2000 will now run off drive D: again, even though it is the
first partition on the disk. Use diskmgmt.msc to give the remaining
partitions the drive letters you like.

 

[Adrian Herscu]

Many people create a multibooting Win98/Win2000 installation
in a somewhat euphoric mood by placing Win2000 on a drive
other than C:, not realising that this sets the scene for some nice
little problems later on. Yours is one of them. There are two
issues you must resolve:
a) You must make Disk 2 bootable. This is easy.
b) You must maintain the system drive letter for Win2000.
This is much harder.

Make Disk 2 bootable
===============
- Boot into Win2000.
- Run diskmgr.msc (Start / Run) and make the system
partition of Disk 2 active.
- Copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
to the root of the Win2000 system partition on Disk 2.
- Run this command: notepad.exe d:\boot.ini and modify
the two strings so that they look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Maintain the System Drive Letter
======================
- Start a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd).
- Type set system and make a note of SystemRoot.
- Copy d:\WinNT\system32\userinit.exe to the
WinNT\system32 folder on your remaining drives on Disk 2.
You will, of course, have to make these folders.
- Turn off the machine.
- Remove the Win98 disk.
- Make the Win2000 disk the primary master disk.
- Boot into Win2000.
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK} and type set system.
I expect that the drive letter is different from what it was
above, probably C:. If it's the same as before, fine. If it is
not then you must change it immediately.
- Run regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices/
- Identify the key DosDevice: that has the incorrect system
drive letter.
- Rename it to what it was before (probably \DosDevices\D
If there is some other value with this letter, delete it.
- Reboot the machine.

Win2000 will now run off drive D: again, even though it is the
first partition on the disk. Use diskmgmt.msc to give the remaining
partitions the drive letters you like.

This is the kind of things I am most afraid of!
If the drive letters will get changed, then how the system will boot at
all?! How I will be able to run regedit.exe to fix that stuff?!

Of course, I do not want to mess with the drive letters, neither with
the hard-disk connections.

The hard-disk are connected as follows:
HD1: Primary Master (one partition identified as C: and contains the
Win98 installation)
HD2: Secondary Master (the first partition is identified as D: and
contains the Win2K installation)

I tried to do this:
1) copied ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from C: to D:
2) in the BIOS setup changed the boot sequence from C: to D:
3) tried to boot -- did not work (unbootable something...)
4) restored the boot sequence from D: to C:
5) run fixboot D: command in the Win2K console
6) tried to boot -- did not work (unbootable something...)

What do I miss?

Adrian.

 

[Adrian Herscu]

Many people create a multibooting Win98/Win2000 installation
in a somewhat euphoric mood by placing Win2000 on a drive
other than C:, not realising that this sets the scene for some nice
little problems later on. Yours is one of them. There are two
issues you must resolve:
a) You must make Disk 2 bootable. This is easy.
b) You must maintain the system drive letter for Win2000.
This is much harder.

Make Disk 2 bootable
===============
- Boot into Win2000.
- Run diskmgr.msc (Start / Run) and make the system
partition of Disk 2 active.
- Copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
to the root of the Win2000 system partition on Disk 2.
- Run this command: notepad.exe d:\boot.ini and modify
the two strings so that they look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Maintain the System Drive Letter
======================
- Start a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd).
- Type set system and make a note of SystemRoot.
- Copy d:\WinNT\system32\userinit.exe to the
WinNT\system32 folder on your remaining drives on Disk 2.
You will, of course, have to make these folders.
- Turn off the machine.
- Remove the Win98 disk.
- Make the Win2000 disk the primary master disk.
- Boot into Win2000.
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK} and type set system.
I expect that the drive letter is different from what it was
above, probably C:. If it's the same as before, fine. If it is
not then you must change it immediately.
- Run regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices/
- Identify the key DosDevice: that has the incorrect system
drive letter.
- Rename it to what it was before (probably \DosDevices\D
If there is some other value with this letter, delete it.
- Reboot the machine.

Win2000 will now run off drive D: again, even though it is the
first partition on the disk. Use diskmgmt.msc to give the remaining
partitions the drive letters you like.

This is the kind of things I am most afraid of!
If the drive letters will get changed, then how the system will boot at
all?! How I will be able to run regedit.exe to fix that stuff?!

Of course, I do not want to mess with the drive letters, neither with
the hard-disk connections.

The hard-disk are connected as follows:
HD1: Primary Master (one partition identified as C: and contains the
Win98 installation)
HD2: Secondary Master (the first partition is identified as D: and
contains the Win2K installation)

I tried to do this:
1) copied ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from C: to D:
2) marked the D: partition as active
2) in the BIOS setup changed the boot sequence from C: to D:
3) tried to boot -- boot sequence failed with the following message:
Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or
corrupt:
<windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

The file exists and is not corrupted because when I am setting the BIOS
to boot from C: again then the system launches as usual.

The boot.ini file on D: is the same as on C: and contains:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Advanced Server" /fastdetect


What do I miss?

Adrian.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Many people create a multibooting Win98/Win2000 installation
in a somewhat euphoric mood by placing Win2000 on a drive
other than C:, not realising that this sets the scene for some nice
little problems later on. Yours is one of them. There are two
issues you must resolve:
a) You must make Disk 2 bootable. This is easy.
b) You must maintain the system drive letter for Win2000.
This is much harder.

Make Disk 2 bootable
===============
- Boot into Win2000.
- Run diskmgr.msc (Start / Run) and make the system
partition of Disk 2 active.
- Copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
to the root of the Win2000 system partition on Disk 2.
- Run this command: notepad.exe d:\boot.ini and modify
the two strings so that they look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Maintain the System Drive Letter
======================
- Start a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd).
- Type set system and make a note of SystemRoot.
- Copy d:\WinNT\system32\userinit.exe to the
WinNT\system32 folder on your remaining drives on Disk 2.
You will, of course, have to make these folders.
- Turn off the machine.
- Remove the Win98 disk.
- Make the Win2000 disk the primary master disk.
- Boot into Win2000.
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK} and type set system.
I expect that the drive letter is different from what it was
above, probably C:. If it's the same as before, fine. If it is
not then you must change it immediately.
- Run regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices/
- Identify the key DosDevice: that has the incorrect system
drive letter.
- Rename it to what it was before (probably \DosDevices\D
If there is some other value with this letter, delete it.
- Reboot the machine.

Win2000 will now run off drive D: again, even though it is the
first partition on the disk. Use diskmgmt.msc to give the remaining
partitions the drive letters you like.

This is the kind of things I am most afraid of!
If the drive letters will get changed, then how the system will boot at
all?! How I will be able to run regedit.exe to fix that stuff?!

Of course, I do not want to mess with the drive letters, neither with
the hard-disk connections.

The hard-disk are connected as follows:
HD1: Primary Master (one partition identified as C: and contains the
Win98 installation)
HD2: Secondary Master (the first partition is identified as D: and
contains the Win2K installation)

I tried to do this:
1) copied ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from C: to D:
2) marked the D: partition as active
2) in the BIOS setup changed the boot sequence from C: to D:
3) tried to boot -- boot sequence failed with the following message:
Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or
corrupt:
<windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

The file exists and is not corrupted because when I am setting the BIOS
to boot from C: again then the system launches as usual.

The boot.ini file on D: is the same as on C: and contains:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Advanced Server" /fastdetect


What do I miss?

Adrian.

Your approach is good: You're testing things while
leaving yourself a safe backout path.

Rather than changing the boot sequence in the BIOS,
disconnect the old disk (which you want to do anyway)
and modify boot.ini on the new disk so that it reads
rdisk(0) (two occurrences).

 

[Sergiu Constanta]

Your approach is good: You're testing things while
leaving yourself a safe backout path.

Rather than changing the boot sequence in the BIOS,
disconnect the old disk (which you want to do anyway)
and modify boot.ini on the new disk so that it reads
rdisk(0) (two occurrences).

Thanks Pegasus, problem solved.
There was no need to disconnect the old disk (I wanted to use it for
swapping and daily backups).
It appears that when changing the BIOS boot sequence, the ARC paths in
the boot.ini need to be fixed (so what was identified as rdisk(1) is now
identified as rdisk(0)). After fixing the ARC path, the boot loader was
able to locate and load the OS kernel.