Removing a Win98 boot drive

[Max C.]

I know that from the subject this looks like a topic that has been
discussed in this group before, but apparently my situation is a bit
different from previous questions (though I would have thought this
wuold be a common scenario.) Apparently most people use different
partitions of the same drive for dual boot systems. That's all I kept
finding references to.

My PC once only had Windows 98. I purchased a new drive and installed
it as the slave to the Win98 drive. I set up Windows 2000 Pro by
booting with the 2000 install disk and pointed the install to the new
D: drive. So, I thought I had 1 win 98 drive and 1 Win 2000 drive.
Now my original Win 98 drive is failing and I need to remove it. I
copied everything I need over to the Win 2000 (D drive. I also made
sure that the basic NT boot files were located on the D: drive (which
they were) and changed the boot.ini file to make sure it was pointing
to the first drive on the controller (since I'd be promoting the slave
D: drive to the master drive.)

The problem is, when I remove the Win 98 drive and make the Win 2000
drive the master, the PC won't boot. I get an error that says there's
no bootable disk present.

What have I missed?

Thanks,
Max.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I know that from the subject this looks like a topic that has been
discussed in this group before, but apparently my situation is a bit
different from previous questions (though I would have thought this
wuold be a common scenario.) Apparently most people use different
partitions of the same drive for dual boot systems. That's all I kept
finding references to.

My PC once only had Windows 98. I purchased a new drive and installed
it as the slave to the Win98 drive. I set up Windows 2000 Pro by
booting with the 2000 install disk and pointed the install to the new
D: drive. So, I thought I had 1 win 98 drive and 1 Win 2000 drive.
Now my original Win 98 drive is failing and I need to remove it. I
copied everything I need over to the Win 2000 (D drive. I also made
sure that the basic NT boot files were located on the D: drive (which
they were) and changed the boot.ini file to make sure it was pointing
to the first drive on the controller (since I'd be promoting the slave
D: drive to the master drive.)

The problem is, when I remove the Win 98 drive and make the Win 2000
drive the master, the PC won't boot. I get an error that says there's
no bootable disk present.

What have I missed?

Thanks,
Max.

You missed a few important things:
1. Since Win2000 saw the light of the day on drive D:, it must always
run off drive letter D:. It's now on drive C:!
2. The Windows partition must be a primary partition. Yours might
be a logical partition.
3. The Windows partition must be active. Yours might not be active.

Item 3 is easily fixed in Disk Management. Items 1 and 2 require
advanced tools and methods.

The simplest remedy would be to buy a small hard disk for next
to nothing (500 MBytes will do quite nicely!). Format it under
Win2000, put the three system files on to it, restore boot.ini to its
former condition and enjoy the result.

If you ever intend to get back into multi-booting, use a proper boot
manager that keeps the various OSs completely separate and
independent from each other. XOSL is such a boot manager and
it's free!

 

[Max C.]

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you brought up these items.

Item #1 - I was looking for a way to keep it as Drive D:. Obviously
all of the entries in the system registry point to D: for the various
software installed, so I can't even imagine trying to switch to C:.
I'm just not sure how to make Windows keep it as D:

Item #2 - I did make it the primary partition and verified that it is
not a logical partition/

Item #3 - I did verify that the partition is active in disk manager.

I have a hard time believing that it's a drive letter thing, because at
this point I'm only able to get to the screen past the initial MB bios
screen. If there's a CD in the drive, I'm asked to press a key to boot
off the CD. If I don't press a key, that's when it says there's no
bootable disk present.

I can't believe it's this hard.

Thanks again.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you brought up these items.

Item #1 - I was looking for a way to keep it as Drive D:. Obviously
all of the entries in the system registry point to D: for the various
software installed, so I can't even imagine trying to switch to C:.
I'm just not sure how to make Windows keep it as D:

Item #2 - I did make it the primary partition and verified that it is
not a logical partition/

Item #3 - I did verify that the partition is active in disk manager.

I have a hard time believing that it's a drive letter thing, because at
this point I'm only able to get to the screen past the initial MB bios
screen. If there's a CD in the drive, I'm asked to press a key to boot
off the CD. If I don't press a key, that's when it says there's no
bootable disk present.

I can't believe it's this hard.

Thanks again.

Making your disk bootable is not hard at all - it can be done
in five minutes. However, this won't affect the drive letter issue.
As you observe correctly your registry is full of references to
drive D:. Changing them is not feasible.

I hinted in my first reply that it is possible to run Windows
on drive D: even though it's the first partition on the primary
master disk. The method is not risk free - you risk losing
Windows altogether. I would only use this method only if
I had another PC with a fully operative network connection
and matching administrator's logon accounts.

Using a small hard disk as a boot disk would be a far
safer method.

 

[Andy]

1. Install the old Windows 98 drive as a slave to the Windows 2000
drive.
2. Install Windows 2000 to the slave drive; this will enable the
master drive to boot Windows 2000.
3. Edit boot.ini on the master drive, changing the two references to
rdisk(1) to rdisk(0).
4. Boot the Windows 2000 on the master drive, which will run as D:.
5. Disconnect the slave drive.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Re your Step 2: There are far easier way of restoring the
Windows boot environment. Running fixmbr and fixboot
from the Recovery Console is one of them.

Re your Step 4: What makes you think that Windows will
have D: as a system drive? I expect it to be C:!

 

[Max C.]

OK, I got it working. I just want to follow up so anyone reading this
in the future can learn from my mistakes. Here's what wound up
working.

1 - Make sure the D: drive is formatted as a primary partition (which
it should be if you set it up the way I did, which was to always run as
a pure Win 2000 drive)
2 - Make sure the D: drive is active. In Disk Manager, right-click the
D drive and click "Mark partition as active"
3 - If necessary, copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from the root
of C: to D:
4 - open boot.ini and change any rdisk(1) value to rdisk(0)
5 - Shut down the PC and remove the C: drive (that has 98 on it) Make
sure to move any jumpers on the remaining drive if necessary.
6 - Boot the PC and make any necessary BIOS changes. Save changes.
7 - Reboot the PC with the 2000 OS CD in the CD drive. When prompted,
boot from that CD.
7 - Choose to repair the 2000 installation, then choose the Recovery
Console.
8 - In recovery console, choose the WINNT installation listed, then log
in with admin password
9 - type fixboot
10 - Reboot into Windows 2000 and be proud.

Somehow (I have no idea how) the 2000 drive remained as drive D:
without me doing anything to it. I fully expected it to be C: when it
came back up, but it wasn't and I was happy.

Hope that helps someone in the future.
Max.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

OK, I got it working. I just want to follow up so anyone reading this
in the future can learn from my mistakes. Here's what wound up
working.

1 - Make sure the D: drive is formatted as a primary partition (which
it should be if you set it up the way I did, which was to always run as
a pure Win 2000 drive)
2 - Make sure the D: drive is active. In Disk Manager, right-click the
D drive and click "Mark partition as active"
3 - If necessary, copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from the root
of C: to D:
4 - open boot.ini and change any rdisk(1) value to rdisk(0)
5 - Shut down the PC and remove the C: drive (that has 98 on it) Make
sure to move any jumpers on the remaining drive if necessary.
6 - Boot the PC and make any necessary BIOS changes. Save changes.
7 - Reboot the PC with the 2000 OS CD in the CD drive. When prompted,
boot from that CD.
7 - Choose to repair the 2000 installation, then choose the Recovery
Console.
8 - In recovery console, choose the WINNT installation listed, then log
in with admin password
9 - type fixboot
10 - Reboot into Windows 2000 and be proud.

Somehow (I have no idea how) the 2000 drive remained as drive D:
without me doing anything to it. I fully expected it to be C: when it
came back up, but it wasn't and I was happy.

Hope that helps someone in the future.
Max.

Congratulations!