how to install winME to dual boot with win2k?

[Conroy9]

I had win98se, and installed win2k to dualboot with it; somehow my installation of win98 got all messed up and it won't boot anymore, and now i want to replace it with winME

Will I be able to install WinME without losing my Win2k boot?

Conroy

 

[VladTrishkin]

No, you MUST install 9x OS (95, 98, ME) first onto drive (partition) C, and then your NT OS. You can try to boot into 98 in safe-mode (hit F8 on startup), and upgrade to ME, that will most likely fix your boot ptoblem.

 

[Conroy9]

Well that's annoying.

Booting into 98 safe mode and then upgrading to WinME won't do nasty things to my win2k install?

I have another question.. if I get another drive, and make my current one my slave, will I be able to install winME and win2K on that drive, and then add a pointer in the boot manager to my old drive's win2k install to have an option to boot win2k from the old drive?
(i would want to do this temporarily while i was getting the new win2k all set up with my programs)

I guess the other thing i could do is use norton ghost to copy my old drive directly to the new drive?? would that work if the drives have different specs?

 

[VladTrishkin]

Booting into 98 safe mode and then upgrading to WinME won't do nasty things to my win2k install?

-No, you will need to install/upgrade it to your old 98 directory folder (windows not winn).


I have another question.. if I get another drive, and make my current one my slave, will I be able to install winME and win2K on that drive, and then add a pointer in the boot manager to my old drive's win2k install to have an option to boot win2k from the old drive?

-I have never seen anyone get this to work...

(i would want to do this temporarily while i was getting the new win2k all set up with my programs)

I guess the other thing i could do is use norton ghost to copy my old drive directly to the new drive?? would that work if the drives have different specs?

-yes that will work

 

[compuwiz1]

You should partition your drive and never run 2 OS's on the same partition. If it alread screwed up, if it were me, I'd redo it and do it right this time.
Make a primary partition of what ever size you want, but leaving enough for about 1gig for Win2k. First install WinMe, then install Win2k, but choose installation option to install in it's own partition. Put WinMe on C and Win2k on D.

 

[Conroy9]

What are the advantages of making 2 partitions and doing that?

 

[compuwiz1]

Number one, it's the proper way. Two, is you avoid having a rats nest of crosslinked files.

 

[Conroy9]

"the proper way"...
when i used to do it like that, my system partitions would get so bloated over time by programs tossing things into the system and system32 folders that i had to reinstall every few months
that's why i stopped doing that.

crosslinked files????
i have never heard of that before

 

[SUOrangeman]

Read the sig. Extract what you need.

-SUO

 

[Conroy9]

ok, i read that 23424 page post

I'm still confused about why separate partitions for win98se and win2k are desirable. Crosslinked files have never been caused by this, and win2k and win98 seem to ignore each others' folders entirely.

So anyway I guess I'll ignore my question of why to do it, and just try to do what's "right".

I still have a few questions on orangeman's configuration though.

What is the reason for splitting up the NTFS portion of the drive into 3.5gb for a Win2k system and 1.5gb for personal files? Why not just have one NTFS partition?
Same question for the Win32 partitions.

So this is what i think i want? :
510mb c: - swap file/temp
big (size of drive-5gb-510mb) NTFS win2k + data (d: in win2k)
1.5gb FAT32 win98 system (d: in win98, unlettered in win2k)
3.5gb FAT32 shared win98/win2k data/downloads (e: )

I also possibly want to have a linux boot; would it be best to find space for that on this drive, or would I be able to later set up a second drive for that, so my second drive would have:
5gb primary - (FAT32? NTFS? priority is speed) swap file / temp space (should i put my win2k swap file here?)
24gb Linux
127mb linux swap

If I do this, will I be able to reinstall win98 without having it mess with the win2k?? That's my biggest concern, I guess, besides performance.

Thanks!

Conroy

 

[SUOrangeman]

Conroy-

Glad you made it through the reading. The Textbook will be available some time ...

Anyhoo, let's look at your questions ...

I put OSes on separate partitions because I want to keep them separate! Yes, you can install both Win9x and WinNT/2K to the same drive (doesn't have to be C: either), but you run the risk of sharing the same \Program Files directory. This is were something could easily get overwritten. And what happens if the shared partition gets corrupted? Well, you lose TWO OSes instead of one. Why go through that hassle?

I used two NTFS partitions so that if I need to blow away the OS side, I can do so without even touching the partition where my personal files are stored. I won't even have to back those files up. Just leave them there and you can access them again after the OS side has been rebuilt.

With the *newer* releases of Linux, you can just about put its partitions anywhere. Since the are unreable in Windows, drive leters and such are unaffected. Now, Linux really doesn't need more than 3GB or so ... especially if you are just starting out. And Linux can probably access your FAT/FAT32 partitions just as they are. You may wanna make it easy on yourself in case you don't like Linux. You can just recover the space and use it in Windows.

In any event, the partition layou you suggested at the end look pretty good.

-SUO

 

[Conroy9]

Heh, I thought putting Linux on a second drive with its own partition was making it easiest, so i could just wipe the partition when i didn't want linux anymore
In any case, I had used linux for a few years many years ago, so I know how much i dislike it already and would not use it unless it was for work, so I would want some extra space and run it in its own file system

Also, if I want to have a big (2-5gb) partition for work space for sound/video editting, would it be fastest with FAT32 or NTFS? or does it not make any noticable difference?

I used to separate my partitions into an OS partition (with 4 partitions for os/2, linux, NT, windows), and then apps/user files partition
This never worked well because many of the apps I installed would stick things into c: without letting me have a choice about it, and fill up my OS partitions
AND when I reinstalled the OS, i'd have to reinstall all the programs anyway because of registry issues (and all the files they stuffed into c
that's why i just started using a huge partition

Oh, and there were 2 things in your doc that weren't clear to me
1) How can I force a FAT16 partition as c:?
2) The whole section about adding linux as an option to the NT loader is confusing.. namely "grab the first 512 bytes of a bootable partition etc etc"
I have no idea how to do that.

And my last question is, what do you use to set up the partitions? Should I put it into a working system as a slave and set up all the partitions with fdisk first, and then take it out and start installin os's?

 

[SUOrangeman]

I'm not going to pretend to know performance stats of FAT/FAT32/NTFS. I'm sure someone else (Storage Review?) may have some better info.

Question 1: Force FAT16?

I would only force FAT16 if I were dealing with NT4. Everything else can handle FAT32 just fine. Besides, under 512MB, FAT32 defaults to FAT16.

Question 2: Adding Linux to NT Loader

You are in luck, there is a program called bootpart.exe that handles everything for you. All you have to do is know what partition you'd want to boot. This proggie will create the 512-byte file and will even add a line to the boot.ini file for you. Lemme see if I can find a link ...Viola!

Question 3: What partitioning tool?

I think I use Partition Magic when I first did my system. It's very hard to beat a graphical interface. Ranish Partition Manager is probably just as powerful, but is text-based ... and that may throw a few people (I'm just starting to use it). And, it's free! New Linux install CDs are getting better with partitioning wizards. You can create all of your partitions (for nearly any OS) and install Linux all in one shot. If you have a good layout in mind, you may be able to translate it effectively into the Linux install and you'd be on your way.

-SUO

 

[Conroy9]

Thanks!

The reason I asked about forcing FAT16 was because I somehow got the idea that it would be faster than FAT32 to use as my swap partition

I have another performance question.. As far as I know, because switching partitions has a small overhead, I read that for highest performance, the swapfile should be on the most-used partition of the least-used drive

Is the difference even big enough to care about??
For that matter, is the performance difference between different file systems big enough to care about also?

And did you say I would be able to reinstall win98 without having it mess with the win2k?? (and the other way around)

 

[Conroy9]

It doesn't seem that i'll be able to reinstall the win98 system without it overriding the bootmanater even if it's on its own partition

is that true??

 

[SUOrangeman]

Try 'setup /ntldr' when you reinstall Win98. I think this is an undocumented way of forcing Win9x to NOT overwrite NT Loader.

JUST TO BE SAFE, boot into Win2K and make an emergency boot floppy with the Backup tool (Accessories\System Tools). If Win98 doesn't behave and overwrites the MBR, boot with the Win2K CD and repair the install. it'll ask for that floppy.

-SUO