wink3 & 98se dual boot

[Os-er]

hi all,

i am trying to cfg a dual boot with 98se which is on it's own 1G hd and win2k3 (6G hd), they have both been installed on the same machine which is an old ibm aptiva.
both work fine by themselves
what i need to know is how-to cfg something so that both oses are recognized, as right now only one drive is detected.
which ide channel should be used for the boot loading os?
hopefully i have given you enough info, if not ask me particulars.

thanks

 

[RealBlackStuff]

The active partition of the Master-harddisk on the primary IDE-channel must contain any dual-boot info for it to be recognised.
If you installed W98 first on the C-drive, and installed W2K later on a separate partition or harddisk, it should have made the PC dual-bootable.

Check if there is a file boot.ini in C:\
If so, can you open it with Notepad and copy its contents here?

Otherwise you will need some boot-software. Look at this webpage
http://www.webtechgeek.com/center-Frame-win-SuperTechGeek-Dual-Boot.htm#dbs
and search for the header Dual Boot Software


PS: noticing that you have an (almost antique) Aptiva, there is a special website for Aptiva's with loads of info. Have a look here:
http://home.att.net/~wymette/aptiva.htm

 

[Os-er]

hi realblack stuff,

sorry i don't think i gave enough info
the 98se is on it's own hard disk
then i got a 6gig whereby i removed the 1gig (no room i thought until i got a reducer bracket to fit in a 5" bay) which allowed me to connect both hard disks
so each os has been installed seperately
i have tried to edit the boot.ini but i must have messed up something because now when i try to access 98se it returns the error about <windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe missing or damaged
but i can boot into windows 2003, and ntoskrnl is there where it is supposed to be, if it was corrupted i shouldn't be able to boot into it, right?
my lines are multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
the 1st line is for win2003, 2nd is 98se
i've tried all commands with bootcfg, like /rebuild, /add etc
i will try your suggestion with a boot software
thanks for the input

 

[Nodsu]

On my W98 dual boot the Windows 98 entry in boot.ini looks like:
C:\="Microsoft Windows"
and it works like a charm.

 

[Os-er]

Nodsu
i entered your suggestion C:\="Microsoft Windows" (didn't work) but when i selected it i also never got the missing ntoskrnl error
i also tried E:\ (because that is the drive letter where 98se is)

 

[RealBlackStuff]

We need to do a bit of pruning here.
When you started first with W98, this got installed on the C-drive, right?
Then you swapped disks and installed W2K3 (apparently not with NTFS, but FAT32), again on a C-drive, right?
Your CD-ROM must be the D-drive, right?
Then, when you fitted the 5"-3" adapter, you put the original W98 disk in (as slave), which turned magically into E-drive, right?

That's where the problem is.
You must make the W98-disk the master, so it becomes C again, and the W2K3-disk must become the slave, both on the same primary IDE-channel. Your CD-rom should be master on the secondary IDE.
Next you will need to copy some sort of boot-utility on your C-drive.
Or you could try to copy BOOT.INI, NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM and maybe also CMLDR from the root of the W2K2 disk to the root of the W98 disk.

If your W2K3 installation is a fresh one, you should really reinstall it, after you have made the W98 the C-drive. Then W2K3 will take care of all your boot-miseries.

 

[Os-er]

you're probably right, argh
i changed the 98 drive letter to E: (& it's fat32)
win2k3 is C:\ & D:\ ntfs
cd is now F:\
cable isn't long enough to put both on same channel, that is why i made both masters
but i will try reversing channels, and run bootcfg again
if that fails i'll go with your re-install suggestion, i just thought there would have been an easier way

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Since your disk drives are not the fastest types, you can connect them in any way as suits you, as long as the C-drive is the master on the primary IDE.

Normally a let's say PIO-3 CD and PIO-4 HD together on one IDE channel make the HD run at the speed of the CD (PIO-3), resp. the slowest device decides the speed of the IDE-channel.
If you can activate DMA on these old drives, you might get a bit more speed out of them. (do this twice in a row in W98, otherwise it won't work. You should get a reboot-advice after the second time)

 

[Os-er]

okay realblackstuff, changed disks around which made it imposssible to access win2k3 (logon pops up and then logsoff)
now that 98 (fat32) is primary master it can't access the ntfs disk
so i am now forced to re-install win2k3
should i make it fat32 also or does it matter
and should i have 98 disk disconnected while installing win2k3

 

[DaveSylvia]

Originally posted by Os-er
now that 98 (fat32) is primary master it can't access the ntfs disk

I always thought that Windows 9x couldn't access NTFS formatted HDs. There may be software that can allow access.

 

[Os-er]

yeah it's all got to do with the inability to change the drive letter of a system disk i guess
so now how do i call the win2k3 disk drive d:
thru regedit \dosdevices d: ?
i'm exploring all options before i have to reload
lol
i tried changing the name of the drive in device manager (98) but the properties for it are greyed out
more to follow, hehe

 

[DaveSylvia]

Originally posted by Os-er
yeah it's all got to do with the inability to change the drive letter of a system disk i guess

Well I thought NTFS drives could never been accessed by Win9x OSs. Not without 3rd party software. No matter which drive letter the NTFS drive is, Windows 98 won't be able to read that drive.

 

[Nodsu]

You have to remember that the drive letters in boot.ini, Windows 98 and Windows 2k3 are completely independent and the windows drive letter settings are meaningless when you are booting things.

The windows 98 installation must be on the C:\ drive (first primary partition on the first hard drive). Since you have installed 2k3 on "c:\" drive also (the 2k3 installation thinks it is on c: that is), your only option is reinstall or "repair" install. You will have trouble with repair because of the messed up drive letters so it is better just to reinstall the 2003.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Os-er,
if you want W98 to be able to read the W2K3 disk, then you should reformat (select the thorough option) the 6GB drive in FAT32, then install W2K3 again, either in one partition or in 2 partitions as you had before.
W2K3 can always read/write W98, but W98 can not access NTFS (as DaveSylvia already said). Using 3rd-party software you will only be able to read NTFS.

On your small harddisks, FAT32 is faster than NTFS anyway.
So, bite in the sour apple, and re-install W2K3 under FAT32.

 

[Os-er]

'k, redid win2k3 as fat32, everything is golden

about ntoskrnl.exe errror, it would appear that comes up if there is a mistake in the boot.ini, my error was the line "Microsoft Windows"
at first i assigned it a multi(0)..........\WINDOWS=
then C:\WINDOWS=
and "Microsoft Windows 98SE"
all of which are wrong
it seems all it wanted was just "Microsoft Windows"
so live and learn, how much time could've i saved, argh

anyway i would like to thank all who responded to me