First time dual boot XP/98SE - 2 HDDs

I have read a few of the older threads regarding dual booting WinXP and Win98SE and some of the replies have me confused.

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

 

One way ,may be easyest, is just go into bios and select hdd1 or hdd2 to boot from.

If your bios does not permit that , then need to know if XP is on a NTFS or FAT32 file system ? Due to both OS's being loaded as drive C: MAY need a third party boot manager.

GAG == http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2588.html
PLOP ==http://www.plop.at/
Bootm020=== http://www.softrepository.com/Utilities-Drivers-System-Files/Controlling-the-booting-process/bootm020-zip.html
Have not used Bootm020. GAG used very little. PLOP currently use but can be hard to set up for begeners. all free.

 

Whiskeyman, since you have installed SE & XP on seperate hard disks, with other hard disk being not connected during the install, you would have to use BIOS to disable/enable individual hdd or use a 3rd party solution.

 

I'm not certain if this would work since I have only set up dual boot during XP installation.

XP (Pro at least) has the ability to set up dual boot. Set the 98 disk as Master (C: ) and boot to the XP CD. Let it analyse the drives and see if it offers to set up the dual boot.

Hope it is that simple.

Matt

 

Hi Whiskeyman,

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)\WINDOWS
[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= "Microsoft 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).

So your choices are now the ones posted by TopFarmer & rsinfo, change the BIOS for every boot (a PITA) or a 3rd party boot loader.

Or, Matt's suggestion is a good one, can do what he suggests thru 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 defualt will be XP with a 30 second timeout.

The two defualts can be changed later.

One more issue: Hope the file system is FAT32 on XP, otherwise the 9X system won't "see" XP's files.

Regards - Charles

 

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.

 

I formatted the XP setup as FAT32. I had a 20GB drive laying around from an old customer who wanted to switch to a larger drive. I figured to test out XP and see how it would run on my PC. I like the idea of the boot floppy seeing as my plan is to install a larger HDD for XP in the future. To me floppy drives will live forever. Thanks to all of you for the insights about the different ways to set this up. Next step is to throw a card in this to run a third drive to store a backup image of XP.

 

Hi Whiskeyman,

Something else to think about since you're at the beginning here with XP.

I have both XP's set up in OS only partitions with each having data only partitions. This pays dividends down the road, especially if as you write, you want another HD as a backup for XP, makes backing up and drive imaging so much easier and faster.

At the top of the XP section, Christer posted a thread: Guide to moving Windows XP default folders from the system partition to a dedicated data partition

In my case the drives/partitions are set up in the following manner:

H & I are my original internal drives now connected via usb housed in external drive cages.

 

I was reading about moving the My Documents folder and creating a second swap file partiton on another drive plus creating other data partitions. This is what I hope to accomplish eventually. I plan on doing that setup with WinXP Pro Retail. Right now I am using my XP Home OEM which I understand the support will run out for that as well in a couple of years while Pro will continue much further. I also plan on building a newer PC for the Pro setup when prices come down even further. I plan on setting this PC up for my great-niece once my new build is done. I'll have to read the lists about the different updates to install on the finalized version. Right now I have all of the updates that apply to this PC and they seem to be stable.

[Edit]

The boot floppy works like a charm.

 

Haven't encountered this situation, but first thought is recovery console fixboot command; would expect it to modify boot.ini for dualbooting? Anyone know?

 

Hi Sparrow,

I've used the bootcfg command and I know that works.

Don't see any reason why the fixboot command wouldn't work in this situation either - I've never used it.

The situation here is not so much a bad boot record, but a boot record/XP installation that doesn't know about Win98.

Regards - Charles

 

I could be wrong but I don't see how this can work without using some kind of third party boot manager so that you can hide one OS from the other. Being that you installed the two seperatly I would guess they were both installed on the c: drive. If this is the case and you connect them both, the drive letter will have to change for one or the other. If this happens, I would think the OS on the drive where the letter gets changed would be all messed up. It would be looking for everything on the c drive rather than the drive it gets designated as.

I'm not really sure what the consequences would be if you connect the XP hard drive to the secondary controller. Perhaps if you set it as active it would boot from it but otherwise I think it'll want to boot from the drive on the primary controller which will get you into 98 but not XP. Also, although I'm not really sure what will happen with drive letters in this case, if it's on the secondary controller and gets assigned the letter d, you'll more than likely get an error saying that it can't find the boot files because it'll be looking for them on c , not d. I could be wrong but I can see all kind of possible problems here.

If you don't want to use a third party boot manager I think the best thing would be to try Dudes suggestion about the boot floppy first. If it boots to both operating systems and they work correctly you can then try something different. Possibly edit the boot.ini file on the hard drive and go from there.

 

Looked up both commands:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixboot.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q291980/

Of the two, Bootcfg seems to be the more appropriate.

Regards - Charles

 

Why not try recovery console bootcfg in this case; can it hurt?

 

By using the boot floppy I don't have to alter the boot.ini. For now this works well for what I am doing. I will be doing a complete reinstall of both operating systems once I buy a couple of new hard drives. Both drives I am using are 20GB and about 5 years old. They are also 5400 r.p.m., ATA 66. With larger drives I can partition them so I can follow Christer's guide. Not only will i use separate drives for XP and 98SE but I plan on creating a storage partiton on the 98SE drive for the Knoppix Live CD files. This will allow smoother operation of Knoppix by allowing me to remove the CD and use a swap file plus the RAM.

The way the boot floppy works now when I am booted to XP it is located on the C: drive and my 98SE drive is recognized as F: & G:. I should have disconnected the optical drives before booting to get the HDD letters to be continuous. When booted to 98SE it is C: & E: drives while XP is D:. Both OSes are functioning quite well.

I am a tad irritated at having to search around XP to find everything. I prefer the clean structure of 98 better. Now it is tweak time and creating shortcuts.

 

I would be interested to see if Zander's point about the C: drive will cause a problem. I know a preinstalled program that has registered file locations can start throwing errors. Unless it is a lot cleverer nowdays, MS Office virtually collapses even if the CD drive changes drive letter, although I suppose those programs can be reinstalled.

Matt

 

LOL, I thought the same when I first went to XP but once you find everything it becomes just as clean structured as 98. Just a matter of learning the OS. Glad to hear it's working out for you.

Just remember, if, when you finally redo things, you plan on continuing with a dual boot setup, install 98 first, then XP. It'll save you a lot of trouble.

 

My guess is that if you try to set it up to boot from the hard drive it would be a problem. Could be wrong about that though.

I was wondering if the OS would even run given the many registry entries there must be for windows itself.

 

Hi Zander,

I'm writing this for anybody else thinking of doing a dual boot config with a 9X /XP.

Install or keep the 9X on partition/drive C. A must.

Install XP on any partition after C - but it would make sense to change a ROM drive letter(s) to X and Y and install XP on D.

Do not disconnect drives when doing the install.

XP has to be formatted in FAT32 in order for the 9X installation to access XP's files.

The installation process of XP creates a dual boot menu.

If I missed anything here, feel free to add to it.

Regards - Charles

 

Why would anyone want to dual boot SE & XP unless there is some application problem beats me. Windows & Linux ok, but SE & XP