Author Topic: Dual boot setup? (Read 387 times)

humble · « **on:** October 27, 2001, 10:44:00 AM »

As mentioned on another thread I just loaded 98 on my xp pro rig for the sake of AH. I had a 2nd hard drive installed but not used (was going to mirror em since this will be my business rig eventually). I put a clean install on this 2nd hard drive (disconnected 1st drive) and so far haven't hooked em both up at once. I know just enough bout these things to be a real danger (to myself mostly). I'm guessing that I can hook em both up and control boot choice from bios on MB. As long as I dont try and run things from "wrong" setup im guessing i'll be ok...just looking to tap the greater wisdom here before I case her up and fire back back up/

bloom25 · « **Reply #1 on:** October 27, 2001, 10:59:00 AM »

Actually that's not the way you are supposed to do a dual boot. You actually just pop in the win98 disk when xp is running and have 98 install on the other harddrive or partition. There is an even better way in your case though, just get a boot manager program and load it up. It will let you select OSs at boot up.

DrSoya · « **Reply #2 on:** October 28, 2001, 12:51:00 AM »

Oh man, you're going to have a lot of "fun" that way.

Won't having to change the hardware setup everytime be a pain?

According to Microsoft, this is the way to do it. I'm taking this from the new help center in Windows XP, search keywords "dual-boot"; seems to me the information could also be in some readme file on the cd.

You can also read article Q306559 of the Knowledge Base, "HOW TO: Create a Multiple-Boot System with Windows XP".

Each OS must have its separate partition (or drive)
The boot partition should be formatted in FAT/FAT32
You have to install Windows 95/98 first, then Windows 2000/XP, in order that Windows 9x does not replace the boot sector and Windows 2000/XP's boot files

What that means, unfortunately, is that if you're ever forced to reinstall Windows 98 (which I do every 4 to 6 months), you'll have to reinstall Windows XP again, since the Windows 98 reinstall will have overwritten the boot sector and XP boot files which allow the system to boot XP.

Some tips:

You don't have to install both OSes on different drives. You can install them on different partitions of the same drive. (That's what I do, even if I have 2 drives, because the second one is really slow.)
If you don't want to have the XP partition given a letter after the CDROM drive, create all your partitions before installing Windows 98. (You only have to format the boot partition.)
Creating an image of each partition after the installation would be a good idea, to save time for the next reinstall. Norton Ghost from Symantec will do that; note however that while it can create an image from a NTFS partition, it cannot write the image to one.
It might be a good idea to have at least a third partition in FAT32 for sharing documents between both OSes, and for writing the partition images with Ghost.
Favorites and email can be shared between both OSes, if you're not afraid of the Registry editor.

If you've already installed Windows 98 on one drive, then I suggest you reconnect both drives, with the one with 98 as boot drive, and reinstall Windows XP on the second drive. When booting on the Windows XP CD, the installation program will detect Windows 98, but it will allow you to install itself on another partition, in which case it will replace the boot sector on the first drive so you can dual-boot.

[ 10-28-2001: Message edited by: DrSoya ]

-lynx- · « **Reply #3 on:** October 30, 2001, 07:13:00 AM »

Can I install 98 on a slave drive?

I have 46GB IBM Deskstar as a master and 6.4GB WD as a slave on IDE1 and a Teac 516 CD-RW - Pioneer CD-ROM on IDE2.

The plan is to install Win98 on a WD, "castrate" it with 98Lite, install CH stuff, AH, FS2000 etc and use this drive as sim-only (until CH come up with drivers). Then, when everything is stable, replace Win2K with XP on a main, IBM drive.

Will the it work? (OS on a slave drive?)

Lephturn · « **Reply #4 on:** October 30, 2001, 09:04:00 AM »

If you ever install 98 again it will munch the boot sector on your boot drive and the NT boot manager will vanish. You CAN fix it without having to re-install XP though. I'm not sure what the term is in XP, but in Win2k you can use the recovery console to repair the boot sector and get your boot manager back so you can choose your OS.

And yes, you can run 98 on a slave drive. The only problem is that 98 can't read NTFS file system, so your boot partition and 98 drive will have to be FAT32. (Blech)

humble · « **Reply #5 on:** October 31, 2001, 04:56:00 PM »

My XP is a "new machine only" version I bought before the formal release (great deal for $100 for xp pro)....all my win 98/win me is also for new machines....once I load one the other doesnt want to load...i own 35-40 win licenses but only have the 1 xp so far...didnt want to by another till I need it. I ended up just F-disking my old P3 866 and setting it up as my AH machine for now....not my 1st choice but its still ok (35-50 FPS)