Dual Boot ? The best way to set up?

[knowley]

Hi I have KT7 motherboard running Win98SE

I want to run Windows 2000 prof. along side untill I am happy it does EVERYTHING I need.

Whats the best way to setup the dual boot?

1. Partition my HD and have separate OS on secondary partition.

If so how do I then select which Partition to boot from?
and is the KT7 ok to do this???

2. Let Mircosoft (oooerrr) do the dual boot for me ?

I have installed W2K on another machine and it let me choose which OS to run during boot up. You can disable this in system info.

Thanks for your input!!!!!

 

[MassMhz]

It works fine to dual boot with windows,no need to partition cause if you want you can install under NTFS,instead of Fat 32.But really no need for this at this point.You can choose which OS will be primary and the time it allows before booting automatically into that default.

 

[mosdef]

I thought if you install both into the same partition then you won't be able to remove either OS if you want to do so in the future.

-mosdef

 

[knowley]

So partitioning is out then?

I wanted to keep using Fat32 for the time being.

Is NTFS that much better? If so will my old Win98SE work ok if I convert the file system?

What do you mean its hard to remove both OSs????

Thanks again

 

[TGirl]

Finally, something I know quite a bit about!!! I'm going to school for my MCSE in Windows 2000. I have one of my computers dual booting upstairs. I definately think you should have a seperate partition for each OS on your machine, MS recommends this although you don't technically HAVE to.

I would put your 98 on the first partition and then Pro on the second. You should keep them separate so you have less conflicts. If you choose NTFS for your Pro, 98 will not be able to read anything on your NTFS partition. Fat or Fat32 cannot read NTFS but NTFS can read Fat or Fat 32.

The main thing NTFS will do for you is provide seperate file level protection, not just Folder level sharing as with Fat32. You can choose to share a folder with whomever you choose and then lockout everyone else from a certain file within that folder. With Fat/(32) your only option is at the folder level with the same share settings for all files within that folder.

At work, I can see a big plus for this, but at home? It depends who you want to lock out of certain files or applications.

Hope this helps. Sorry if too winded or elementary as I don't know your level of knowledge.

 

[MassMhz]

Win2k will let you choose NTFS,and 98 will run more independently from it,but it is not neccessary.The FAT32 is fine.I've seen no probs with the FAT on dual boot and don't see a need for NTFS /dual boot/home user.

 

[MassMhz]

TGirl,what is the boot process when you run OS' on seperate partitions?

 

[TGirl]

Oh, man! I had that in there but deleted it out. When your computer first starts up it will ask you which OS and if you don't choose it will choose the default os. You can change this in 2000 by going to going to System Properties, Advanced, Startup and recovery. You can choose from there which OS is to be the default and how long your system waits before going to the default OS.

 

[The Dancing Peacock]

I just set up a dual-boot system on my machine last night. I had 98se installed already, and used partition magic to shrink the 98se partition to 3 gb, made a 2 gb partition for 2kpro, then an 8gb partition for apps. After that, 2kpro set up the boot menu, you can set the default within 2K. (Search on Dual-boot and you'll find the instructions) 2k was easier to install than 98 was. It recognized my nic,video,sound cards, my monitor. The only thing I needed drivers for was my UDMA 66 Controllers.

Everything I saw said to install 98 first then do 2k pro, so that 2k pro will write to the MBR. I used fat32 for all my partitions so that I could access everything.


late.

TDP

 

[Radboy]

Linkage

 

[dcdomain]

Just remember to choose new/clean install, not the upgrade, and remember to click the checkbox that asks if you want to be prompted for which partition to install in. Then during setup you can choose which partition Win2K installs into.

Lastly, if you system is fairly new, which it looks to be, go to the OS forum, and do a search on SYSTEMced. Many Win2K users have had problems with corrupt registries because Win2K will pull the power on the harddrives before they have time to write everything from cache. Save yourself the headaches by reading up on that thread first. Of course, it's been happening mainly to MSi Pro2a and Maxtor/Western Digital users... which you are neither... but just in case.

 

[TGirl]

Oh really, thanks man! I have a MSI Pro2a that I'm about to put together. Thanks for the warning - I'm going to check that out.

 

[MassMhz]

So are you saying,when you start the machine,it will prompt you to chose which OS even though it is on another drive as in another partition.I know it will do that with both on 1 drive, but 2 seperate drives?

 

[dcdomain]

Yup, it'll prompt you, it doesn't matter whether they are on two separate drives or two different partitions on a single drive... it's all the same.

 

[ALstonLoong]

i have a question guys about dual boot. Let say i install winme and win2k in 2 different harddrive. If i format winme in driver c: will the win2k still boot in the other drive?

alston

 

[knowley]

Thanks RADBOY that link is very good and usefull....

Cheers !!!!!

 

[velvetfreak]

Alston

You will need to repair the boot sector and replace the boot files: BOOT.INI, NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and NTBOOTDD.SYS if you have a SCSI card without a BIOS chip. Also, you don't say if you're putting WinME back. If you are, you will need the BOOTSECT.DOS. The quickest way to repair the boot sector is to boot the setup CD-ROM and use the Repair option. This will also create a BOOTSECT.DOS with the WinME boot sector.

Also, MS' Knowledge base is a great source of Multi-boot info:

Link 1

Link 2

I've done the triple-boot with DOS 6.22, Win95b and NT4 (kills a rainy afternoon). When you're done with that, you'll understand the process real well.