dual boot help - read the previous ones, still a little confused

[Gogeta4832]

Hey all.

Here's the situation:

drive 0 (primary) - has win XP installed on it.
drive 1 (slave) - has win 98se installed on it.

I remember someplace that if you change the boot.ini on the XP drive, I can set up a boot menu
to use either system. But I don't remember how to do it.

Any one able to help me??

 

[bacillus]

do you not get a boot choice of OS screen?

 

[sharq]

I'm too lazy to read anything prior to this one, but a search on google for "dual boot xp" popped up this as the first result Didn't read it fully, but on a glance I think it covers your problem:
webtechgeek.com
And another link that mentions the boot.ini:
experts-exchange.com

 

[Gogeta4832]

don't get a choice of operating systems to run.
and I tried those links, but all they say is that I should have win98 installed first.

I really don't want to swap the hard drives (making slave->master and master->slave)

definitely and annoying problem.

anyone else have any input they can provide

 

[KF]

XP is on the C: drive
W98 is on the D: drive

If you installed W98 while it was the C: drive (which is what I am guessing), then you can't get W98 to boot when it is the D: drive. W98 has it's drive letter hard coded in the registry and MSDOS.SYS. Neither XP nor W98 will boot all the way if the drive partition or drive sequence is changed. Therefore changing boot.ini is not a complete solution.

In addition, both XP and 98se need to have some files on the C: drive for their boot loaders to work right.

Both XP and 98 can have everything except a couple of boot files on a drive other than C:

Possibly, installing 98se over itself will fix the drive letter problem. I've never done it, so I don't know. (It does work for XP.) If you want to try that, consult the Anandtech FAQ about dual boot. Installing 98se second is not a big deal, but there are some details to take of which are not automatic.
Should work for XP as well as W2K

"If you do happen to find that Win98/SE/ME has overwritten the Win2K MBR and Boot Menu, boot up from the Win2K CDROM and perform a repair installation (by hitting R when prompted).

Either use the Recovery Console, and type in the command fixboot, or allow Win2K to perform an automatic or manual repair. "

"Recovery Console" is not a reinstall. It just gives you something like a DOS prompt from which you type in commands. Type help to get a list of commands and info.