Dual booting win98se and win2000pro

Your best best is to install windows 98 on the c:\ drive and Nt on the d:\ drive
I am currently running my system this way and it seems to run best.  I use the Nt boot manager, I have a 6.4 gb drive and how I have it setup is like this and it works very good.
I partitioned my drive with
c:\ >> 3gb win98
d:\ >> 3gb winnt
e:\ >> 500 megs  For swap drive, both for windows 98 and nt
this way your have a dedicated swap drive soley for paging file and swapfile.  You could also do something simular and allocate some disk space for swap page file.  It is a fast way.  This way you will have a fragmented swap drive and it is easyier to defrag other drives.

I need more guidance..I only have c: drive now and 1 partition..what should I do?

Do you know how to use partition magic?
you could resize your partitions, I have my drives fat32 as if you use ntfs then win98 will not beable to access the ntfs drive, but the other hand, with fat32 win2000 and win98 will beable to access all fat32 partitions.  I would resize my partitions.  I did not have partition magic, so I backed up my data and then manually partitioned my drives and then reinstalled my software and Os.

Any other guy with experience on these things and on partition magic?

Unless you feel you are in need of the security features of ntfs, or if you like the fact that ntfs need not be defragged, there is no real need for you to install Win98 and Win2k on separate drives/partitions.

Simply run either install program from their respective cd (it works no matter you start off with either Windows version) and install on the same drive/partition.

wayneb, how did you manage to get the swap file to the partition you want?
is it the primary partition?
which partition must be active?

Tell me the optimized way plz!
:)

You can specify which drive the swap file and or page file resides and since a partition has a drive letter you can point it to there.

You will not need Boot Magic as Win 2000 boot loader will handle the dual boot.  Fire up Partition Magic and resize your current partition where 98SE resides.  Leave the 4 Gig free space on the hard disk that you intend to use for Win 2000.  Upon completion, install Win 2000 to a new partition that you will create in Win 2000 install to use the unused portion of the hard disk.  You will probably want to make it a FAT32 partition so you can swap data from 98SE to/from Win 2000.  Win 2000 will control the boot process and an option on the boot menu will allow you to select 98SE or Win 2000.  Pretty easy.

I tend to follow wayneb's solution with a third partition for swap files...how big that should be ?
I have 128 Mb ram
Should I change the settings in virtual area memory of both oses?
thnx

wayneb : shouldn't you have the swaps at c: ??? (www.winmag.com/windows/guides/win2000/15.htm

Wayneb's idea of a swap file drive isn't bad... Windows 2000 swap (pagefile is what they really are called) file should be 150% of RAM - if you have 128 MB of RAM, then you should have a 192 MB swap file.  I think 500 MB for a page file drive as wayne suggests would be fine and allow room for expansion.  Further, under 2000, you should set the pagefile size to the same minimum and maximum - but if you set this as I just described, there's no reason to have a separate drive for paging - the only time where moving the page file off the C: REALLY makes sense is when you have another PHYSICAL drive - if you move it then it can help (though probably not noticeably) increase performance.  Under NT4, it wanted to have a 2 MB pagefile on the C: drive, regardless of where you put the rest - I don't know if 2000 does the same thing.

As mentioned before, you don't need Boot Magic - Windows 2000 will handle the dual boot fine.

Ultimately, you don't HAVE to repartition the drive at all - you can install 98 and 2000 to the same drive letter.  There is a small issue with an accessory - a dll gets replaced that is incompatible with 2000, but you can put it back and fix this.  The benefits of doing things this way are that you waste very little space.  Programs you want to run on both OSs will have to be installed twice.  This includes little utilities like HyperTerminal.

Personally, the way I setup dual boots is as follows:

C: - Win9x
D: - Shared Programs/Data
E: - Windows 2000

Why?  98 has it's own partition with no possible interference from 2000.
You install (this means you have to be AWARE of where things are being installed to) all software to the D: drive and put any data there you need to share between operating systems.  Then you install Windows 2000 to the E: drive - you can leave it as FAT32 or convert it to NTFS - both operating systems will see the programs drive as D:.

Only thing left to mention is, if you end up reinstalling the system, install 98 first - 2000's setup program recognizes that 98's installed and sets up an option to boot to it for you (just make sure you don't "Upgrade" when prompted for the type of install you're doing...)

You could do it alot of ways, but I perfer to do it the way I explained, it keeps the program files folder seperate on each of the drives for one thing.  I have good performance doing this way and I have only a 233 with 64 megs or ram.  And if you ever have to reinstall the os's are on seperate partitions.
It is major to have to repartition your drives so you have to rethink everything.

Have a look at this, from Microsoft

Configuring Page Files for Optimization and Recovery

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The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.51, 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0, Terminal Server Edition
Microsoft Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.51, 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SUMMARY
Windows NT Server and Windows 2000, by default, will place the pagefile on the boot partition where the operating system is installed. To determine the size of the pagefile multiply the amount of physical RAM by 1.5. However, placing the pagefile on the boot partition does not optimize performance because Windows NT and Windows 2000 have to perform disk I/O on both the system directory and the pagefile. Therefore, it is recommended that you place the pagefile on a different partition and different physical hard disk drive so that Windows NT and Windows 2000 can handle multiple I/O requests more quickly.

However, completely removing the pagefile from the boot partition does not allow Windows NT or Windows 2000 to create a crash dump file (Memory.dmp) should a kernel mode STOP error occur. Not having this crash dump file could lead to extended server downtime should the STOP require a debug to be performed.

The optimal solution is to create one pagefile on the boot partition using the default settings and create one pagefile on another less frequently used partition. The best option is to create the second pagefile so that it is on its own partition, with no data or operating system-specific files.

Windows NT and Windows 2000 will use the pagefile on the less frequently used partition over the pagefile on the heavily used boot partition. Windows NT and Windows 2000 use an internal algorithm to determine which page file to use for virtual memory management. In the above scenario, the following goals of the page file would be served:



The system will be properly configured to capture a Memory.dmp file should the computer experience a kernel mode STOP error.


The page file on the less frequently used partition will be used the majority of the time because it is not on a busy partition.





MORE INFORMATION
Another advantage of using a pagefile on its own partition is that the pagefile will not become fragmented. If the pagefile is on a partition with other data, the pagefile might experience fragmentation as it expands to satisfy the extra virtual memory required. A defragmented pagefile leads to faster virtual memory access and improves the chances of capturing a dump file without significant errors.

Here is the article if you want to look at it.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q197/3/79.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=TECH&FR=1

What are the best settings for the swaps files of both win98se and win2000 pro?

It depends on what you project to be doing.  Win2000 certainly uses more memory than 98 leaving less of a reserve to any applications you may be running so a fairly large pagefile may be needed, depending on what programs you use and how much multitasking you expect to do.  Virtual memory is a kind of last resort after physical memory has been `exhausted' but you certainly want to allow enough so you won't be limited.  Of course, the same goes for Win98.  The 128MB that you have installed is a good amount for either OS, but you also don't want to be constrained to `total memory available'.  There have been instances on my system where actual physical memory has been exceeded three fold which took advantage of a 312MB pagefile that I had set.  It all depends on what you will be doing.  Of course it's better to have more of something than not enough as it will not inhibit what you can do.  If you dedicate a sole partition for swap and pagefile, I would recommend 3X memory installed.  It may initially appear extreme and possibly not capitalised upon throughout your processing but, like I said, better safe than sorry.

I installed win2000 pro on e: drive (win98se is still in c:) fat32
Can I now set a partition on the beggining of hard disk with swap files or it is too dangerous ?

This KB give you also more info:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.ASP

Mario

leew : waht do you have to say?

skiabox:
Using your Partition Magic should, at this point, do exactly what you require.  Of course you do need to be careful when you are playing around with partitions.  What is your D: drive dedicated to?