EDStech
asked on
Dualboot Win2K & 98
Setup:
6.4gb HD, two partitions.
Partition1: 3gb NTFS with Win2K installed.
Partition2: 3gb FAT32 with Win98 installed.
When i put: d:\="Win98" in the boot.ini it just makes the pc reboot when I select it. I figure, maybe its not thinking its drive D but rather E or F or something. Nope. No matter what i select, it just reboots.
I want to be able to boot 98 off the boot manager.
Please DO NOT suggest I put NT on the second partition and put 98 on the primary, thats not a solution. Also not suggest I go buy system commander or Boot Magic since both of those will not boot from a NTFS primary. Also do not suggest I take the 400mb which is unaccounted for in my partion map above and make a fat drive to boot from, since I don't want to screw up my NT installed programs which expect everything to be on drive C.
Thanks.
Oh, BTW. I have a second HD which is 1.6gb. To install 98, i put this drive in and removed the 6gb drive which allowed me to install 98 as primary on C. I then used PQ Drive Image to mirror the 1gb drive over to the second partition on the 6gb, so I know the boot files are fine. The 1gb is still installed so even if the PQ copy failed, the boot.ini should still find the 1gb as drive E and boot of of that. It doesn't.
6.4gb HD, two partitions.
Partition1: 3gb NTFS with Win2K installed.
Partition2: 3gb FAT32 with Win98 installed.
When i put: d:\="Win98" in the boot.ini it just makes the pc reboot when I select it. I figure, maybe its not thinking its drive D but rather E or F or something. Nope. No matter what i select, it just reboots.
I want to be able to boot 98 off the boot manager.
Please DO NOT suggest I put NT on the second partition and put 98 on the primary, thats not a solution. Also not suggest I go buy system commander or Boot Magic since both of those will not boot from a NTFS primary. Also do not suggest I take the 400mb which is unaccounted for in my partion map above and make a fat drive to boot from, since I don't want to screw up my NT installed programs which expect everything to be on drive C.
Thanks.
Oh, BTW. I have a second HD which is 1.6gb. To install 98, i put this drive in and removed the 6gb drive which allowed me to install 98 as primary on C. I then used PQ Drive Image to mirror the 1gb drive over to the second partition on the 6gb, so I know the boot files are fine. The 1gb is still installed so even if the PQ copy failed, the boot.ini should still find the 1gb as drive E and boot of of that. It doesn't.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
This KB says how to do it: End indeed W98 needs to be on the first partition.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.ASP
Mario
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.ASP
Mario
ASKER
Lermitte: That KB article deals with installing multiple OS's on the same partition, not seperate partitions.
pjk: A primarty partition or THE primary partition? I currently still have the 1gb drive installed and its a primary partition on a second HD. I don't really see why it would make a difference, since the boot files are on the 1gb drive as they should be, and the 6gb is a ntfs so all win98 sees is the 1gb as drive c.. If i installed IBM's boot manager it'd easily work but it'd make me reinstall all my apps since they'd start looking for apps on drive C which would now be a 8mb fat16 partition.
Someone has to know how to do this... win2k reads fat32 drives happily, the boot.ini has no reason not to work that I can see...
Thanks for the help guys
pjk: A primarty partition or THE primary partition? I currently still have the 1gb drive installed and its a primary partition on a second HD. I don't really see why it would make a difference, since the boot files are on the 1gb drive as they should be, and the 6gb is a ntfs so all win98 sees is the 1gb as drive c.. If i installed IBM's boot manager it'd easily work but it'd make me reinstall all my apps since they'd start looking for apps on drive C which would now be a 8mb fat16 partition.
Someone has to know how to do this... win2k reads fat32 drives happily, the boot.ini has no reason not to work that I can see...
Thanks for the help guys
Well, one way to deal with the drive letter change if you were to add in a third-party boot manager is another nifty PQ tool, DriveMapper.
It comes with PartitionMagic I think. You specify which drive letters changed from what to what, and it goes through all your links, INI files, and registry, changing all drive letter references. In classic PQ style, it's pretty slickly designed, so allows you some granular control over which references are changed. It's worked well for me several times when I've shuffled around HDs and partitions.
One other thing: I'm not sure how it'd behave in your situation (since I took the easy way out and installed 98 on my first part and win2k on my second), but once installed Win2K seems to latch on pretty hard to the drive letter it uses for it's system partition. Since NT address partitions as absulute device addresses and is not bound to DOS/Win9x's way of assigning letters based on the order IDE sees them, theoretically *any* partion could be C, D, E, etc. You can just re-assign them in Disk Administrator. One thing Disk Admin WON'T let you do, though, is change the letter on your system partition. When I first installed Win2K, it shacked up on drive letter E: and no matter how I rearranged the rest of my partitions and drives, it stuck on drive E:. Like I've said, I've never seen your particular situation in action, but I don't think Win2K will actually change it's drive letter if you add the boot manager.
Sheesh, that got long! :)
Hope some of it helps...
Prevost
It comes with PartitionMagic I think. You specify which drive letters changed from what to what, and it goes through all your links, INI files, and registry, changing all drive letter references. In classic PQ style, it's pretty slickly designed, so allows you some granular control over which references are changed. It's worked well for me several times when I've shuffled around HDs and partitions.
One other thing: I'm not sure how it'd behave in your situation (since I took the easy way out and installed 98 on my first part and win2k on my second), but once installed Win2K seems to latch on pretty hard to the drive letter it uses for it's system partition. Since NT address partitions as absulute device addresses and is not bound to DOS/Win9x's way of assigning letters based on the order IDE sees them, theoretically *any* partion could be C, D, E, etc. You can just re-assign them in Disk Administrator. One thing Disk Admin WON'T let you do, though, is change the letter on your system partition. When I first installed Win2K, it shacked up on drive letter E: and no matter how I rearranged the rest of my partitions and drives, it stuck on drive E:. Like I've said, I've never seen your particular situation in action, but I don't think Win2K will actually change it's drive letter if you add the boot manager.
Sheesh, that got long! :)
Hope some of it helps...
Prevost
ASKER
Although thank you for the effort, It didn't help any since I didn't understand a word for it. Or, rather to say, I understood it just fine but I seem to have missed the point. :(
If anyone has windows2000 magazine, supposedly they had an article which explained step by step how to do what i'm trying to do. Its free points if anyone just quotes that article before I find a copy of it. ;)
If anyone has windows2000 magazine, supposedly they had an article which explained step by step how to do what i'm trying to do. Its free points if anyone just quotes that article before I find a copy of it. ;)
It's this article I think:
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Content/8312_01.html?SearchString=dual%20boot
Mario
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Content/8312_01.html?SearchString=dual%20boot
Mario
ASKER
Heh. Nice try. ;)
If you go to winntmag.com and scroll down, the actual article is there. But to read the real thing, you gotta be a subscriber to the magazine. One of my coworkers is a subscriber, and he said he'll bring in the mag tomorrow, but I suspect he'll forget, so i'm givin ya'll the chance.
Thanks
If you go to winntmag.com and scroll down, the actual article is there. But to read the real thing, you gotta be a subscriber to the magazine. One of my coworkers is a subscriber, and he said he'll bring in the mag tomorrow, but I suspect he'll forget, so i'm givin ya'll the chance.
Thanks
No problem.
To clarify though, I think DriveMapper would fix your issue with installed programs referencing the incorrect drive letter. If installing a boot utility moves your system/application partition from C: to D:, DriveMapper can change all the programs' incorrect references over to D:. (I've never used IBM's boot manager so I don't honestly know how it sets things up, but you seemed to imply it points C: to a new 8MB FAT16 part and moves everything else back, so this might be a useful compromise)
But hey, if you find a slicker way to solve it from that article, more power to you! Good luck!
Prevost
To clarify though, I think DriveMapper would fix your issue with installed programs referencing the incorrect drive letter. If installing a boot utility moves your system/application partition from C: to D:, DriveMapper can change all the programs' incorrect references over to D:. (I've never used IBM's boot manager so I don't honestly know how it sets things up, but you seemed to imply it points C: to a new 8MB FAT16 part and moves everything else back, so this might be a useful compromise)
But hey, if you find a slicker way to solve it from that article, more power to you! Good luck!
Prevost
ASKER
Well, here was my solution. Its messy, its ugly, but it works. (Kinda)
I'm an OS/2 sys admin (cool job huh.. not) so of course IBM's boot manager came to mind. But I didn't want to add a fat partition at the front of the drive. But then it occours to me, duh, lets just put it at the end of the drive and convert the second partition to a primary, so i have 3 primary partitions. Well, yup, that worked. Install the boot manager and mark the 3rd partition primary. As an added bonus, since its at the end of the drive, it doesn't interfere with the other partition drive letterings. Nifty eh.
To be honest, the idea came from pjknibbs when he stated that 98 has to boot from "a primary partition." Or at least partially.
So, without further ado, lets wrap this up.
Thanks to all who contributed, I appreciate all the help.
I'm an OS/2 sys admin (cool job huh.. not) so of course IBM's boot manager came to mind. But I didn't want to add a fat partition at the front of the drive. But then it occours to me, duh, lets just put it at the end of the drive and convert the second partition to a primary, so i have 3 primary partitions. Well, yup, that worked. Install the boot manager and mark the 3rd partition primary. As an added bonus, since its at the end of the drive, it doesn't interfere with the other partition drive letterings. Nifty eh.
To be honest, the idea came from pjknibbs when he stated that 98 has to boot from "a primary partition." Or at least partially.
So, without further ado, lets wrap this up.
Thanks to all who contributed, I appreciate all the help.
disk (0) partition (1)
Your second hard drive would be Disk (1)
check this out it might help:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q99/7/43.ASP