How do I get win xp to work with win 98se?

[coastymad]

I have a 40GB HDD with win 98se and a 120GB HDD with win xp pro on it. I can boot win 98 fine but when I want to boot win xp pro a blue screen ome up saying something along the lines of Unmountable_Boot_Volume and It goes on and on saying things like If you have any new hardware Installed disable it etc. Now I don't have the internet at home so I can't upgrade the windows files. Is there anything else I could do apart from update the files.

 

[luvr]

Perhaps your Windows XP partition is hidden, and you will have to unhide it in order to allow Windows XP to boot off of it. Quite a few utilities are available to do this - two that I can think of are PowerQuest PartitionMagic (which is commercial) and GNU GRUB (which typically comes with Linux, and can be run from many Linux Live CDs).

Another possibility is, that you originally installed Windows XP while your 120-GB disk was the first harddisk; Windows XP will, then, have assigned drive letter "C:" to its system disk during its installation procedure. You would, then, have moved your WinXP disk into second position, and your Win98 disk is now the first one. Thus, whenever you boot your computer, drive letter "C:" will refer to your Win98 system; when you subsequently attempt to boot WinXP, it can no longer assign its own system partition the "C:" drive letter, and it gets stuck. To overcome this, you will either have to reinstall XP, or use GNU GRUB as your boot manager (which allows you to swap the first and second disks while Windows is booting; incidentally, it will also allow you to hide and unhide partitions as you see fit).

 

[RealBlackStuff]

A bit more info please.
Are both HDs in the same PC, and were they always in there when you installed?
For them to work together, W98SE must be(have been) install first, AND it MUST be on the C-drive.
XP MUST be(have been) installed afterwards, wherever you like. XP will create the bootmenu.
If W98 was installed on one PC and XP on another PC, then the HD put in the W98 PC, you also have hardware incompatibilities.
If W98 was installed on C, then replace the HD and install XP, both Windows would run on the C-drive. This can apparently ONLY be done using the GRUB bootmaker. However, I can't help you with that, look in Google or ask someone else.

 

[coastymad]

Win 98 was installed first on the C drive. I later added the 120GB drive then, then later installed winxp on the new drive and changed it to NTFS using the setup programme. Both disks were in the same pc when I installed winxp.

 

[luvr]

Win 98 was installed first on the C drive. I later added the 120GB drive then, then later installed winxp on the new drive and changed it to NTFS using the setup programme. Both disks were in the same pc when I installed winxp.

In that case, it should work.

As realblackstuff explained, Windows XP will have created the boot menu.

During Windows XP install, your Windows 98 partition should have been "C:" and the Windows XP partition (on your second drive) should have been called "D:". Do you remember if that was really the case? If so, then I'm pretty sure that your Windows XP partition will somehow have been "hidden" (I've seen this happen before, but I have no idea why it would occur). You will have to "unhide" it, then (see my earlier post in this thread).

 

[coastymad]

Is there any other way to unhide it apart from having to buy something to fix it?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Found this freebie on the web:

Download this file http://www.freewebs.com/computer-guides/test/gdisk.exe

use a startup diskette or any bootup floppy or CD that gets you into native DOS. Run gdisk and use the the /-HIDE switch to make your partition visible again. Run gdisk /status or gdisk (1,2,3,etc) /status first to see which partition number is hidden. you must specify the right partition.

 

[coastymad]

I went to the website and downloaded the file I ran it as you said but it says please insert last disk of the multi volume. Does any body out there know of ANY free or very cheap ones. PLEASE.

 

[luvr]

Does any body out there know of ANY free or very cheap ones. PLEASE.

If you're on broadband, you could download either Knoppix or SuSE Linux Live CD. They are free Linux versions that you can run directly from CD, without touching anything on your harddisk.
You'll need to run a few commands from the command line, so if you need help, just shout.

Oh - I just remembered that, for the SuSE Live CD, you'll need at least 512 MB of RAM, so if you have less than that, go for Knoppix.

 

[coastymad]

Thanks for that I get broadband in roughly 20 days so I'll have to wait till then. If you don't mind I'll send you a message and ask for your help.

 

[luvr]

There may be one other thing you could try: Boot up your Windows XP CD, go into recovery mode, and run a disk check on your Windows XP partition.

Our support personnel at the office have seen a few occasions when this helped.

I'm not familiar with Windows XP recovery mode, though; I have never had to use it, so I cannot possibly answer any questions about it.