Strange Dual Boot Probs

reno · Nov 13, 2002, 01:54 AM

First, I'd like to request that this not be moved to...well, whatever forum it should be in, I really don't know... The reason being that I'd like to have someone actually look at this and maybe answer, and since no one really goes to the other forums (besides flaming one) I posted here.

Anyway, here's what I did. I installed win xp on my primary harddrive that is just one big 80gb partition. Then, after installing all my crap, I powered down, disconnected my primary drive (leaving my secondary drive as slave) and repartitioned/formatted it to one 1.5gb FAT32 part and one 38.5gb part.

Now, I know there is a way to get the boot loader screen for XP to link to my Win98SE drive, but I'm at a loss for how. I tried adding a new setting to boot.ini that looked like this...

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 98 Special Edition"

considering the original had XP booting off of "disk(0)" instead of "disk(1)." Now, the only problem is, when I select "Microsoft Windows 98 Special Edition" on the boot loader screen it says that it can't read a bootable disk from the location specified, and that windows can't be started. Then after I press a key my machine restarts.

Does anyone know how I can edit into the boot.ini the location of the Win98SE startup crap, so that instead of setting my BIOS to boot from HDD 1 instead of 0 I can just press a key or two?

My configuration is this.

A: Floppy
C: 80gb NTFS partition (WinXP Home + files and crap)
D: 1.5gb FAT32 partition (Win98 SE)
E: 38.5gb FAT32 partition (files and crap)

My windows 98 se windows directory is "D:\WINDOWS" and my Windows XP windows directory is "C:\WINDOWS."

Any help will be FULLY appreciated.

Shaith · Nov 13, 2002, 02:05 AM

try d:\="Win98SEThatYouShouldDeleteAnyway"

that's what's needed to get you going.

Shaith · Nov 13, 2002, 02:07 AM

oh, and I'm moving this thread anyway

Kelsenellenelvian · Nov 13, 2002, 02:22 AM

I think you did your installs backwards try it the other way thats what I did when I was beta-testing xp always work thatway.

Vampyromaniac · Nov 13, 2002, 04:15 AM

Hmmm . . . Win98 on slave disk?
I'm interested to see how this turns out, since Win98 is not supposed to be able to directly boot off a slave, but perhaps XP's loader makes it possible indirectly?

P.S. Lol @ "special edition"

Highwood · Nov 13, 2002, 11:08 AM

I seem to remember hearing that in a dual boot with winxp 98 has to be loaded first.

digitalwanderer · Nov 13, 2002, 11:29 AM

I've always done my XP installations after my 98se install. I have 40GB drives in all my rigs broken up into various partitions ranging from about 2GB-10GB. Probably about 5-6 virtual drives each on Blue/Bubbles, 3 on Boomer. My 98se install is on my C: drive, and then I just toss XP on to whichever partition I can empty easiest and format that's over 3-4GB. It always sets itself up nicely for the dual-boot and I've never given it much thought.

My big problem is I keep forgetting that I can't just re-install 98se without losing my XP partition. If'n I could figure out a way to re-install 98se underneath my XP install without having to re-install XP I think I'd be a happier man.

BTW-Bubbles has taken to XP like a duck to water and I've been pretty much just using XP on her....'cept for a few times I boot up into 98se just to play GTA3...it runs smooth as butter for me in 98se. (It runs really good in XP, just not quite as good.

)

Blue does NOT like XP, does not like it at all. I still haven't even managed to install all my devices on her yet and her System Device Manager has them damned yellow explanation point triangles all over the place.

I figure if I can get it set-up decent on Blue then I'll have it mastered.

UberLord · Nov 13, 2002, 12:26 PM

Try using decent boot manager then. It's GPLed

Actually, I don't use that one - and never have done - but anything has gotta be a damn sight easier than the microsoft one.

I personally alternate between IBM's BootManager (that came with OS/2 and old versions of Partition Magic), LILO (used by most Linux distro's) or the BeOS one.

The downside of all of the above is that you need the OS the boot manager was written for to change things. The advantage of the sourceforge one linked at the top is that it runs all off a floppy disk

Vampyromaniac · Nov 13, 2002, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
My big problem is I keep forgetting that I can't just re-install 98se without losing my XP partition. If'n I could figure out a way to re-install 98se underneath my XP install without having to re-install XP I think I'd be a happier man.

You ever try using a Ghost image? Meaning: when you have a fresh install of Win98, make an image, then to re-install, restore the partition over the existing Win98 from the image.

I dunno . . . it should work . . . I think

JavaFox · Nov 13, 2002, 06:02 PM

Install Win98SE, and then install WinXP. The XP bootloader will do the rest

digitalwanderer · Nov 13, 2002, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vampyromaniac
You ever try using a Ghost image? Meaning: when you have a fresh install of Win98, make an image, then to re-install, restore the partition over the existing Win98 from the image.

Ghosting is for sissies and girly-men who don't see each install of win98se as a true expression of creativity and art! I'll ghost it if/when I ever get the PERFECT 98se set-up, 'til then I'm gonna keep winging it each time to play with it just a tad.

reno · Nov 13, 2002, 10:04 PM

Okay, to answer some thingies here.

Yes, I do ghost. I ghosted my WinXP drive in it's fully tweaked state, which is why I hate reinstalling it anymore.

I did install XP first, which I know is the wrong way, but I did it because it took me two hours to tweak all the settings in registry to how I wanted it, can't remember how to do it all anymore, and didn't want to reinstall everything all over again...for the eigth time. And anyway, after having WinXp installed for a few weeks I was forced to do this now, just so I could play damn DVDs.

Win98se does boot off the slave disk, I just set boot device to "HDD1" in my bios and everything works fine.

I was forced to use 98se because my audigy has conflicts with SOMETHING in my system under WinXp, and I watch DVDs alot...which is what the conflict screws up. Trust me, I did NOT want to look at that ugly piece of shit again. But, it was my only option after weeks asking for help here, from creative, from via, and from microsoft.

If I have to manually set my bios to boot from the second disk, then so be it, I will not reinstall windows XP. BUT, there has to be SOME WAY to manually edit into the bootloader the string I need to use to make win98se's link boot. If anyone has the string from their boot.ini (if they dual boot with a Win9x kernel OS), please copy and paste it, that'll be all I need to figure it out. Thanks.

Yeah, I know I suck for doing it the ghetto way, but really, there hasn't been one hiccup switching between OSes via my BIOS, and I successfully watch Star Wars Episode 2 from beginning to end in full Dolby Digital EX, uncompressed, fidelity....after three weeks of jerky DVDs and dropped frames using the Audigy to decode digitally...watching a truly beautiful (as in "oh my god, the quality of the picture and sound is the best I've seen and heard...anywhere!") DVD without any problems was a HUGE relief.

Stupid Creative/Microsoft/Via...

reno · Nov 13, 2002, 10:12 PM

Unrelated to my problem, but related to installing 98se on a dual boot.

If you have two harddrives, you are in luck, if you don't, you're screwed. I was able to just disconnect my XP drive and never had any problems, but if you update 98Se with XP on the same drive, it screws up the master boot record for XP and ruins your XP setup. If you format the XP partion to NTFS, it MIGHT work, just because Win98Se can't see NTFS. Dunno though.

Oh, btw, could you send me a copy of your boot INI? Just like, copy and paste it or something and send me a private message if you like, I'd REALLY appreciate it.

Jeff · Nov 13, 2002, 10:14 PM

instead of the multi(0) blah... just try d:\windows.... thats the way i used it in the past as far as i can remember.

Shaith · Nov 14, 2002, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
My big problem is I keep forgetting that I can't just re-install 98se without losing my XP partition. If'n I could figure out a way to re-install 98se underneath my XP install without having to re-install XP I think I'd be a happier man.

Sure you can. Re-install 98. After you finish, use the XP recovery console via the XP CD and run FIXBOOT.

If you trash the MBR, FIXMBR will fix it handily.

Also good if you've ever installed XP on a drive that is NOT the first drive in your rig and then remove the first drive (and with it the boot loader)

reno · Nov 15, 2002, 12:24 AM

Okay, setting that to "D:\WINDOWS" without the quotes caused the booting to start trying to load Windows XP, I know this because all the files it referenced were in "WINDOWS\SYSTEM32" which 98 doesn't use.

Any way to FORCE it to load the Win98 system? It seems like it's looking to boot XP from my D drive.