Dual Booting Windows XP and 98se

[Ben_Porter]

Hello. I've got a situation I was hoping someone could help me with. I want to install Windows XP and Windows 98se as a dual boot setup. I'm doing a clean install on both. I've got the drive partitioned and everything. I installed 98se on what would be the D: drive (2nd partition) formatted as FAT32. I got that working then went about installing XP. I started the install from within 98se. It was installed on the C: drive (1st partition) and formatted as NTFS. Got that working but now 98se won't boot. It shows up in the boot menu, though, for some reason. I've went looking for stuff on this (Google) but it wasn't much help. The only things that I can figure is that the bootloader file (boot.ini, I think) is not configured properly or that 98se has to be on the C: drive and so XP needs to be on D:. Thanks for any help.

Ben Porter.

 

[Guest]

I presume that C disk is the primary partition (boot).
If that is so then problem lies with Win98SE.

When you installed Win98 some boot files were put on C disk. When you installed XP over it and changed it to NTFS the Win98 was lost.

The loader trys to access the files but Win98 doesn't know how to handle NTFS so it doesn't boot.

What you have to do is have the primary (boot) partition in FAT32.

You coul make a small a few meg (don't know the exact number) partition with FAT32 and mark it primary active patition.
Than Win98 and WinXP can be put on their own partitions with their own file systems. As long as the actual boot patition is FAT32 the Win98 will boot OK.

Hope it helps.

- Tekumze

 

[Ben_Porter]

Cool. Thanks. I noticed that there were some files on the C: drive when I installed 98. I was thinking that starting the XP install from within 98 would take care of that. Guess not. :frown: . Oh well. Off to install 98se on C: and XP on D: then. Thanks again.

Ben Porter.