How to ENABLE dual boot of XP/Win98se??

[DaveR]

I have a C: drive with Win98SE. I bought a new drive, and disconnected the win98 drive. I attached the new drive so it is, of course still C: and did an fdisk and format. I then installed XP.

All is OK.

So, now I was wondering if I could keep my New drive as C: and add my win98 drive as D: and have it dual boot?

Can I use XP's bootmgr?

I just do not want to mess up win98se (any more than M$ did) but wonder if win98 is now D: will the apps work when I boot win98?

 

[bacillus]

<< now I was wondering if I could keep my New drive as C: and add my win98 drive as D: and have it dual boot? >>


afraid not!
you should have just added the new hdd to the system & installed XP on it!

 

[WhoDeeny]

the best way to do this (and M$ has several knowledge base articles on the subject) is to partition one of the drives and place win98 on the first partition, then go back and install xp on the second. use your other in anyway you see fit, although when I did it I used it mostly for programs.

Still win98, must be on the first partition or Win XP will muck up the boot record.

 

[DaveR]

Thanks people. I actually did this OK on another system, but as stated, I left win98 alone and added a new hard drive as D:. When I put XP on D: all went OK as boot.ini was added to the win98 drive.

Still, I wonder if ACRONIS boot selector would work as I wanted?

They claim that the package is shareware and is time limited, but the boot manager portion is not time limited.

 

[pkypkypky]

<< Still win98, must be on the first partition or Win XP will muck up the boot record. >>



is there anyway around this if you installed WINME on d: and second winxp on c:

now winME won't boot...is there a fix. if not, best solution? i don't mind installing winme again, but do not want to install xp again. i don't think i can move xp to c: without causing problems.

 

[Derango]

Windows 98/ME really, really, really wants to be on the first partition of the first hard drive. If you do it any differently, I doubt you're going to get it to work correctly. At least...I never got it working right. Just bite the bullet, put ME on C: and XP on d:. Thats how my setup is (except I use 2k instead of XP)

 

[SUOrangeman]

You should be able to happily connect both drives without reinstalling either OS. You just have to use a third-party boot manager.

XOSL is a freebie that comes to mind. www.xosl.org. I only played with it for a minute, but I think it can hide/unhide partitions so Windows won't get to messed up with drive letters.

I think Ranish Partition Manager has a boot utility. System Commander Lite is available on some UK site for free (I don't have the link anymore). The full System Commander and PartitionMagic's BootMagic can also do the dance.

-SUO