Restore Dual Boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter hawk
  • Start date Start date
H

hawk

I have system with Win98fe on physical drive "C" and WinXP Home on
physical drive "D". Everything was working just as I wanted, but then
I decided to format and re-install Win98. I created the WinXP recovery
disk which consists of formatting a disk in WinXP and then copying a
couple of files from the "C" drive root directory. (boot.ini,
bootsect.dos, ntldr, and ntdetect.com) But after the format and
re-install of Win98, the dual boot menu doesn't show up unless the
recovery disk is in the drive, even after I copied all of the files
back to "C" drive root.

I think there is something that needs to be done to the MBR on "C"
drive to cause it to use those files. Can someone tell me how to fix
this problem?

Regards, hawk
 
Thanks again for your reply. But Doug Knox give instructions for the
case where XP is installed on "C" drive. The notepad file most likely
will not work when XP is on "D" drive. Anyway, I will try the fixboot
routine without the debug stuff.

Regards, hawk
 
OK, I have studied Doug Knox's instructions more. The debug routine
simply copies data from the "C" drive boot sector to a file named
C:\BOOTSECT.DOS. I suppose the Win98 installation overwrites this
sector with boot instructions for booting Win98. Then, the rest of his
instructions repair the boot sector to what it was on the existing
WinXP installation, which restores the dual boot information.

But, I don't understand his disclaimer that the procedure will only
work with a system where WinXP is installed on "C" drive, and by
implication that Win98 will be installed on some other drive. It seems
to me that this procedure will work for any WinXP/Win98 installation.
The only requirement being that drive "C" is FAT16 or FAT32.

Any comments?

Regards, hawk
 
Hawk,

I think it has to do with the default active drive being C:
What you need to do is copy boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com to C: go
to the recovery console and use either fixboot or fixmbr to fix the
master boot record wich was modified by win 98.

I had a Win XP installed in C: and installed a Linux distro which
contained GRUB, when I got rid of Linux I went to the recovery
console and did fixmbr.

I think the only difference in your case, being D: drive is that after
you get to the recovery console, you'll have to change to drive C: and
then use either fixboot or fixmbr.

I suggested fixmbr because it was the one I had experience with.Doug
Knox suggests fixboot, in both cases the master boot record needs to
be fixed.

HTH
 
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