I want to set up my system to dual boot with Win XP Pro and Win 98. I currently have Win XP Pro. I backed up my system, Win XP Pro, to an external HDD then I re-formatted my HDD and partitioned into two partitions. Installed Win 98 on first partition, Win XP Pro on 2nd partiton. No problem so far. When I boot I get the boot loader and can boot in either system. I want to restore my existing WinXP Pro so I restore the backed up image to the 2nd partition. No more boot loader, Can't boot win 98. What files do I need to preserve from the clean WN XP Pro install to get the boot loader and my original XP Pro. I'v tried saving the clean install boot.ini file and overwriting the original, but then both operating systems hang and don't boot. The clean install boot.ini is as follow:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\ = "Microsoft Windows"

Thanks for any help.
45romeo :hotouch:

Welcome to TechSpot

Simple answer, you can't.

The W98 must be on the first harddisk in the first partition, which you already have (C-drive).
XP can go in any partition you like, in your case the second partition, this is OK.

BUT, the XP-image you have, comes from the original C-drive and when you restore it, it overwrites the booting info on the C-drive, even if it gets restored to the D-drive.
Also, all the path-info on XP points to the C-drive, rather than the D-drive where you want it.
Only solution: Install W98 on C-drive, and fully re-install XP on D-drive.
(or forget about W98 alltogether and restore XP to C-drive).

Yes, you will need to preserve the old boot.ini file as this will be written over by drive image. it tries to be too smart.

OK then, how bout this. I have an extra HDD that has Win 98 on it already. Can I set this drive up as slave and the win xp drive up as master and then have a choice of which drive to boot. The win 98 drive is ATA and the Win xp drive is IDE. Will they work together?

Thanks for the help. I also enjoy a Guinness once in while!
45romeo

Again, the answer is no.
W98 MUST be on the C-drive (which is always the Master) and that C-drive (or C-partition) MUST always be the Active partition.
As I said before, XP can go anywhere, so bite the bullet and install XP afresh in any other partition than C and on any drive.
ATA and IDE are different terms for the same, but they come in flavours, ATA33/66/100/133.
Putting 2 HDs of a different ATAspeed together will bring them both down to the speed of the slowest HD. The same goes for a HD and a CD/DVD together.
Always keep your HDs on IDE0 and CD/DVDs on IDE1

OK this is what has worked for me. I went ahead and restored my image to my 80 GB HD. Then I added the 3GB ATA drive and formattted it using WIN XP with FAT32. Then I removed the 80 GB from the system and installed Win 98 to the 3 GB drive. I set the 3 GB drive to slave and the 80 GB to master. I then started the 80 GB drive and booted into my exiting XP. I then downloaded a little gem of an App called "OSL2000 Boot Manager" I installed the boot manager while booted to the WIN XP disk, restared the machine and had the option to boot to either HDD/OS. Seems to work perfectly. Of course, the win 98 doesn't recognize the Win XP drive because it is NTFS. However, the 98 dirve is shown as "E" when booted to WinXP. My biggest problem now is finding win 98 drivers for all the PCI stuff that is is finding. These are PCI bus management system, PCI card, PCI Multimedia device and PCI ethernet contoller. Do you have any suggestions here? The puter is a Dell Dimension 2400, P4.

Thanks for the advice on the HDs.

45Romeo

wtf

um you can dual boot XP and 98, why in the hell would you think yall couldnt dual boot a NTFS and FAT/FAT32? thats retarded man!

You can install the two different OS on different partitions and dual boot them, you just wont be able to access each other while in the OS your in cause NTFS and FAT32 dont look at each other unless you use some third party tool while in Windows 98 in dos mode like NTFS reader for DOS...

I cant even beleive you said that sh*t, where the hell did you learn about computers from?

M.C.S.E

Rockdrala

Area 51 I.T. Staff
http://support.studio505.net

Dell 2400 running Win98

1. install 98SE with the command "setup /p i". This will force setup to install without ACPI. The on-board video will now work (as a generic PCI video card) without memory conflicts.

2. install the chipset software installation utility, integrated graphics driver, and USB 2.0 driver that can be found by going to www.intel.com -> support & downloads -> downloads -> entering "d845gvsr".

3. Install the Broadcom 4401 drivers from www.broadcom.com to get the network card to work.

4. Sound driver. It's an ADI 198x integrated audio. To get driver, go to dell.com, do a search for "r49606.exe". It will say that nothing was found in software & peripherals, but click on the "technical support faq" tab in the same page. This driver can't be installed by simply running setup, since it was written for other Dimension models. You'll have to "update driver" in the device manager and click to proceed when Windows 98SE complains that it
wasn't written for the hardware.

worked fine for me