Win 2000 Master Drive & Win 98 Slave Drive

[Jim]

I made a 'new' install of Windows 2000 on my 'C' drive. I
had a Windows 98 SE boot 'C' drive installed in the system
to be the slave to the newly installed Win 2000 'C' drive.
I booted to Windows 2000. My problem is that I can no
longer boot from the Windows 98 SE drive. Unfortunately,
I need to boot back into Windows 98 with this drive. Can
I correct this situation by using a Windows 98 boot floppy
and copying COMMAND.COM back to that drive?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

- Was Win98 visible as drive C: while it worked?
- What drive is Win98 on in your current configuration?

 

[me_here]

if you havnt deleted the system folder on ur win98 drive u can place it in
as the master on the primary drive then boot ... from wat u have written tis
is the onlky configuration i can think of
hope this helps

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Please answer both questions in my post - it's no fun
guessing your configuration!

 

[Jim]

No! I dont expect you to guess my configuration. Actually
I thought I amswered your question. I am trying to be as
clear as possible in defining my situation. To answer
both questions...

1. Yes when the Win 98 SE boot drive was in my system it
booted and came up as the 'C' drive. So yes it was visible
as drive 'C'.
2. The Win 98 SE drive came up fine as the 'G' drive in
the current configuration.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Since Win98 saw the light of the day as drive C:, it will only run
if it still is drive C:. This is clearly not the case in your current
configuration.

The solution is not straightforward. It requires a third-party boot
loader that lets you hide one partition and make the other
partition visible so that each always appears as drive C:. XOSL
is such a boot loader, and it's free too.

If you're not familiar with boot loaders and partition manipulation
then I recommend this low-risk path:
- Install some old disk as a master disk. Disconnect your
current disk.
- Install XOSL on the old disk.
- Connect your current disk as a slave disk.
- Add two menu items to XOSL:
* Win2000
* Win98
- Tell XOSL to hide the Win98 partition when booting into
Win2000, and vice versa.

It is possible to install XOSL on your existing disk but the
risk of getting it wrong (and wiping your disk) is quite high
for a beginner.

Post again if you need further instructions.

 

[Geoffw]

disconnect the drive with win2000 on it

re jumper the win98 drive as master reboot into win98

Geoff

 

[Jim]

Pegasus -
I would like to thank you for your efforts to help.

The drive with Win 98SE was a perfectly good bootable hard
drive with many applications. Let me explain the reason I
would like to get that Win 98SE, G: hard drive, to boot
again. I thought that I would be able to boot from this
drive with no problems by simply switching the Slave
jumper to master. So I placed this drive, which was my Win
98 boot drive, as the slave to a Win 2000 hard drive by
switching jumpers. The reason for this was to move data
from my Win 98 drive to the Win 2000 drive; e.g. Outlook
Express data, Word and Excel data, etc. This way I could
take my time with the transfer of data from one drive to
another reducing the chances of errors made in data
transfer. I would also have the benefit of both Win 98
and Win 2000 by removing hard drives and configuring
jumpers. Unfortunately, I could not boot from the Win 98
hard drive after removing the Win 2000 configured boot
hard drive and changing the jumpers back to master on the
Win 98 hard drive.

After explaining the situation a little more does your
advice about XOSL still hold?

Just making sure we are on the same page if I wasn't very
clear the first time around.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No, we're not on the same wavelength.

My advice was base on the assumption that you wanted
to switch between Win2000 and Win98. It is now obvious
that this is not the case. All you want to do is to move
data from Win98 to Win2000. Now you see why I asked
for full details in one of my previous posts.

I have two answers:

- To move data from your Win98 drive, you do not need to
boot into Win98. You can do it while in Win2000. Why
do you think you need to boot into Win98?

- If you make your Win98 disk the master disk, why can't
you boot? What's the error message? How far do you
get?