Partition Magic 6 and the partition that needed a bath

I have a duel-boot system with Win 98se on one partition, Win 2000 Pro, on another and a third (non-bootable) partition strictly for data files. Partition Magic 6.0 is the program that helped me to accomplish this some 4 years ago. Since I started with one 27GB hard drive with Windows 98, I installed PM6 on that (my only hard drive at the time).

My duel-boot scenario has been working swell ever since, but now I want to upgrade my Win 98 OS to Win 2000, leaving me with two separate Windows 2000 bootable partitions (I know it seems wacky, but I have some very good reasons for keeping things separate).

Now, my original Win 98 volume is such a mess I want to completely reformat and erase everything on that partition before installing W2K with a FAT32 system. Remember, the Win 98 partition is where Partition Magic and Boot Magic are installed, if I completely wash away everything on that volume (including those two programs) am I going to run into some big troubles with my partitions and bootability or can I just install those applications once Win 2000 is going and everything will be fine?

I’m sorry for the obvious TechSupport inquiry, but as you may know Symantec now owns Partition Magic and no longer provides support for this older application, and I don’t know where else to turn.
Thank You for your help.

 

Welcome to the BBS, puphedz

How about installing PM6 on the Win 2000 Pro Partition? Boot to that partition and do the deed on the win 98 partition.

 

Thank you for the tip, Bmoore. That is going to be my last resort. I have a rather old computer with a slow processor and not much RAM (at least by today's standards). Until I wrangle up enough cash to build me a new one I have to settle with this machine.

I do Video Production and Graphic design; and video work on a compuer takes a lot of resources and power (as you probably know) and on an old computer like mine every little bit helps. I have my current Windows 2000 partition reserved strictly for video and audio production with nothing else in it, and my current Win 98 side is for everything else.

As I am not very computer-saavy, I am hesitant to add any temporary or unnecessary applications to my "A/V media" partition in fear that once uninstalled the application will have already created no-longer-wanted files and added and changed registry entries that I have no idea how to track down and remove.

Often I push my system to its maximum for creative purposes and hangups like uninstalled application fragments can get in the way of my workflow in the form of extremely slow operation, freezes and system crashes.

I'm probably over-thinging and over-worrying the situation; I just want things to go smoothly.

Thanks again.

 

I would rather see you call it " Thinking BEFORE DOING. "

Something which many users DO NOT DO and then scream when they get into trouble.

It read like you are already pushing that machine to very close to the limit.

More good thinking. I wish I had done some ( more ) of that a couple of times.

BillyBob

 

You don't say where 98 is installed - I'm assuming on C. When you install WK2 on C, that's where the boot.in file will reside which means the system will automatically boot to C - the new installation. At that point, you install your programs, including Boot Magic.

Regards - Charles

 

The boot.ini shouldn't come into play here. With boot magic installed it get's written to the boot record and takes the place of 2k's boot menu.

Edit:
Now that I think about this a bit though, I may be wrong about that. If you install the new OS, it will probably overwrite the boot record, so....

To be on the safe side make sure you make the boot magic rescue disk. There probably won't be any problems but make sure you have them anyway.

 

With boot magic installed it get's written to the boot record and takes the place of 2k's boot menu

Zander, I understand that; puphedz seems to be worried about being able to boot into that partition the first time in order install Boot Magic.

I'm assuming that Boot Magic's current version of it's boot ini is on C which would be wiped out along with everything else on C, but maybe that's not so?

Regards - Charles

 

Charles
See my edit above.

Even so, I don't think boot magic uses a boot.ini of any type. I've got a puter with it installed and the way I see it is it just gets written to the boot record. I can see possible problems though when you remove the OS that it's installed on. My guess is (if boot magic survives the new OS install) that when you boot the computer you'll get an error message about the OS missing. Usually, by default when something isn't right boot magic will give the error message and then boot the computer to the OS that boot magic is installed on. I don't know what happens when that OS is gone. That's why I say make sure to have the rescue disk made. If it doesn't boot you can boot from the floppy and use it to remove the old OS and add the new and thus straighten things out.

 

Thank you, everyone, for all your advice. I'll take all of it into concideration when I do the dirty work today, hopefully.

I will post the outcome in a few days, once I get my new OS running smooth.

.......Wait, wouldn't that be an oxymoron if using Microsoft products.

 

So...I read somewhere that if one removes the data on the partition which holds Boot Magic the computer still looks for it when it boots. What I did was uninstall Boot Magic in 98, set that partition active then do a clean install of Win 2000 after a nice formating.

Everything went swell until I ran into a brand new problem in the Windows 2000 forum.

Thank You all for your advice and ideas. I hope some day I can be of some assistance to you.