R. C. White said:
Hi, Peter.
Since you've "deleted everything from Cdrive", your problem should be easy
to solve. Just boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and tell it to install WinXP on
C:, including reformatting C:. Have you tried that? You've told us
you've tried "Every which way", but you haven't said if that includes
booting from the WinXP CD-ROM.
But let's clear up what you want to do - where do you want to end up? Do
you want to continue to dual boot WinXP and Win98? Do you want to dual
boot WinXP on both C: and E:? Is C: big enough to hold WinXP (at least 5
GB; 10 would be better for just WinXP; more will be needed if you will be
installing apps and data there, too)? Also, you haven't said how many
HDDs you have and how they are partitioned and formatted. After all, "C
drive" is usually the first primary partition on the first HDD, but it
could be any volume on any HDD, and so could "E drive".
When we know the answers to those questions, we'll be able to give you
more specific advice. Until then, we just have to make some assumptions -
which might not fit what you want to do at all.
As you may know, the basic pattern of the native dual boot system built
into every NT-based Windows since at least WinNT4 starts by booting from
the Active partition on the first HDD, normally Drive C:. The file
C:\boot.ini contains a directory of all the operating systems installed on
the computer and presents a menu, from which one OS is chosen. Then
C:\NTLDR and C:\NTDETECT.COM load the chosen Windows from wherever
C:\boot.ini says it resides, in any volume on any HDD in the computer.
So, the boot process will always start in C:, then branch to E: or C: or
wherever Windows is installed.
First, the simple assumption: You want to do a clean install of WinXP on
Drive C:, the first primary partition on the first HDD, including reformat
of C:. In that case, just boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and tell it to do
that. Setup will offer to reformat C:, so let it. (Unless you plan to
reinstall Win98, use NTFS.) Then tell it to install WinXP on C:. Setup
will notice that you already have WinXP on E: and will ask if you want to
overwrite that; tell it No, do a clean install on a different partition.
After WinXP installs again, you will have a dual-boot menu that offers to
boot WinXP or WinXP! That's OK, except that you won't know which WinXP is
which until you edit C:\boot.ini to change at least one of the labels.
Boot into either copy of WinXP and go to System Properties | Advanced |
Startup and Recovery Settings, and click the Edit button. This will open
C:\boot.ini in Notepad. At the top, under [boot loader], you will see the
default= line, which shows the location of the WinXP installation that
boots if you don't choose a different one. All the choices available are
listed under [operating systems]. Note that the location is by HDD
(rdisk(#)) and partition(#) NUMBERS, not by Drive letter. Disk numbers
start at zero and partition numbers with one on each HDD. If you have
just one HDD, these may be rdisk(0)partition(1) for Drive C: and
rdisk(0)partition(3) for Drive E:, but I'm only guessing. You can edit
the labels within quotes to suit yourself; WinXP ignores these except to
show them in the menu for your benefit. You might make one say "WinXP
(C)" and the other "WinXP (E)", or whatever makes sense to you. You can
edit the default here or in several other places; the easiest way might be
to Save your edited C:\boot.ini, then select the default on the Settings
page.
When you tell us more about (a) where you are now and (c) where you want
to end up, we can be more specific about (b) how to get from here to
there.
RC
--
and XP (on E