Win2000 and Win98SE dualboot

[Eksa]

Hi,

I have currently two separate harddisks, one having Windows 2000 Pro
(NTFS) and one having Windows 98SE (FAT32). When Win2k was installed,
i didn't have other harddisk. When i got the second disk, i removed
the Win2k harddisk and placed the new disk as a primary. Then i
installed Win98SE on that. Both OS boot fine individually. In other
words, i have to remove Win2k disk if i want to boot to Win98SE and
vice versa. Quite annoying...

Now i want to create a dual boot, so that a boot menu appears when i
power on my computer. I've read quite a lot related topics, but
haven't find solution how to do this. First of all, which one of the
drives should be master and which one slave? Both are connected to
same IDE. And how to setup the actual boot menu? I really don't want
to re-install either one of operating systems. Can you guys help me?

Do i need a 3rd party boot manager, or can this be solved without it?

Thanks in advance,
Eksa

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Eksa

Check if your system BIOS allow you to set the boot order, and has an
option to boot from your second hard disk (usually called D) before your
first (usually called C). This would essentially change the order of your
disks so that your slave disk becomes primary, and would make it possible
to boot either Win2000 or Win98 without physically switching hard disks.

Don't forget to change the jumpers on your disks so one is set as master
and the other one as slave. It doesn't matter which one will be the master,
though, as the BIOS settings will take care of the boot order.

There may very well be third party boot managers that can handle this
better and easier, but I haven't been dual booting for several years now so
I cannot advice which one to use.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[osmethod]

Hello,

The simplest method since you do not want to reinstall the OSes is to
put the Win2k disk as primary and WinXP disk as secondary. (These can
be on the same IDE channel but for maximum speed put them on separate
IDE channels).

Then download "Smart Boot Manager". You just need to download the
following 2 files:

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/3.7/sbminst.exe
http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/cwsdpmi.exe

Copy both files to a bootable floppy disk and then reboot with this
disk.
At the A:\ prompt do the following....

a:\sbminst -t us -d 128 and press enter

Press "Y" when prompted and then reboot your computer, removing the
floppy disk.

When you reboot a menu will appear with both the OSes. You should see:

HD0 Primary 1 (Win2k disk)
HD1 Primary 1 (WinXP disk)

Use the down/up arrow to get to the menuitem. Press "CTRL+X" on "HD1
Primary 1 (WinXP disk)". Now press "F2" to save changes.

Highlight whichever OS you want to use and press "Enter".

You should now be able to boot either OS.