Dual Boot Winxp And Win98se

[TheTerrorist_75]

Here's the scenario. I now have 2 OS hard drives. 1 fully loaded with Win98SE and 1 fully loaded with WinXP. What would the best setup be? Also will the setup be recognized with nothing further done. I installed both OSes separately of each other without the other drive present.

Master: Win98SE

Slave: WinXP

Master: WinXP

Slave: Win98SE

OR

Cable Select

End of IDE cable: Win98SE

Middle of IDE cable: WinXP

End of IDE cable: WinXP

Middle of cable: Win98SE

[shanenin]

depending on either configuration, won't you need to edit your boot.ini file to point ot the other os?

I would think it would be better to have 98 se in your master postion.

edit added later//

the following is just a hunch. I can't find anything to back this up. I would probably put 98 on the master postion, then xp on the slave. Afterwords boot an xp cd and run the recovery console, then run the command fixmbr. This may set up you config files to give you the option to choose between OSs. Again this is just a hunch.

Edited March 17, 2006 by shanenin

[xxkbxx]

I'm not sure if the boot.ini file would do anything for you because I don't see one OS recognizing the other on a separate hard drive.

IMO I'd just put the one you use most frequently as the Master, then the other as Slave. As needed, just pull up the old boot menu and boot from Slave (if this wouldn't be an inconvienance to you)

[KeithLDick]

When I put my old 98SE main drive as a *Slave* in another machine it was just recognized as just another hard drive... Didn't see any way to make it boot 98SE...

I think you have to install one OS 1st then install the other so the Boot loader knows there are 2-OS's... (Not sure tho)...

I bet Pete knows...

[TheTerrorist_75]

I got this reply at WindowsBBS. I like the boot floppy option. This allows me to test out the XP install before finalizing it. I plan on buying 2 new hard drives and redo the setup later on.

Thanks for the suggestions.

surferdude2

One other possibility is boot to the XP drive and make a boot floppy that contains the loader files for XP. Just format a floppy and copy the three files:

NTLDR

NTDETECT.COM

BOOT.INI

All are located on the root of the XP drive. You must be set to see Hidden files to view all of them.

Then edit the BOOT.INI file on that floppy to change the rdisk designation (both listings) from (0) to (1). Save the change and you're all set with an XP boot disk.

Then connect the Win98SE drive on the end of the cable and the XP drive to the center (using cable select on both). To boot to the Win98SE system, leave the boot floppy out of the drive and boot up normally. To boot to the XP system, boot with the floppy inserted on the drive. It will then boot to the XP drive.

This may seem to be a bit of a kluge but it spares you having to get some third party boot software or having to modify the MBR and bootloader files of your present drives so I thought I'd throw it in for consideration.

If you don't have a floppy drive, you can do the same thing with a bootable CD and setting the BIOS to look at the CD first.

I don't suggest this is anything but a quick and easy way out of your situation and so may have appeal from that standpopint.

If you intend to have this dual system setup for a long time you may consider running a Repair Install of XP and it will detect the Win98SE during the process and set up the dual boot automatically without any input on your part. Even then you will have to run the fixmbr command from the Repair Console or the boot.ini file won't be read at boot up.

OR

charlesvar

You should have had both drives connected when installing XP and XP must be installed on any partition other than C when dual booting with 9X.

XP's install would have created a dual menu putting the boot.ini file on the 9X's partition/drive.

What that looks like:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP on D" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect=OptIn /NoExecute=OptIn

It would have two installation entries - yours would have the 9X as the installation on disk(0).

OR

Through XP's Recovery Console.

Boot with the XP cd into the XP installtion (set the BIOS to boot from the cd).

You'll get a choice to run the RC.

Type help for a list of commands.

The one you want: Bootcfg - Automatically scans all local disks for Windows installations and configures and repairs entries in the operating system menu (Boot.ini).

If that works, no reason for it not to - that'll give you a dual boot menu. The default will be XP with a 30 second timeout.

[xxkbxx]

Have fun terrorist - one day I'll may do a multiboot with all stages of windows available

Why? Because you can!