Can I put 2nd OS on slave drive

[Bill in SD, CA]

Can I install Win 98 on my slave drive and be able to boot from it? Currently running W2K on master which is NTFS. Slave is Fat 32. Some harware and programs I have do not run on W2K. If so, how do I go about doing it?

Thanks,
Bill

[AllGamer]

YES AND YES

but it needs some minor Tweaking, both in BIOS and FDISK or 3rd party partitioning tools

:t

[rangeral]

Its prefererable to put 9x on C first then next later OS on second hdd, much easier. With 2k already on you'll probably have to run fixboot and or put 2k cd in to run a repair.

[BipolarBill]

I don't recommend it. Either or both OSes can be lost too easily. Win98 has to write an MBR to the second disk because it cannot use NTFS. Because of this, you will have no easy way to choose which disk to boot from and once you do, you're stuck there. If you make major changes to drive 0, you could end up with nothing.

As AG has said, it can be done with XOSL, System Commander or Boot Magic. After you install Win9x, it won't reboot to complete setup until you load one of the above apps to "locate" Win9x. Finish setup, but remember that you're stuck with a 3rd-party boot manager and everything else must remain the same on the file-system level.

[Bill in SD, CA]

OK:

#1. I don't care about anything on the hard drives. This is a fresh install of W2K. I haven't had time to put anything on either drive to lose anything important.

#2. If I were to start over from scratch, what would be the best course of action?

#3. Am I to assume that both drives will need to be Fat 32?

#4. Will that interfere with the other 2 systems that I have networked which are W2k/NTFS?

#5. I have 6 gb of mp3's that I backed up to the master. Can I transfer them over to the slave which is currently Fat 32. If I can't and I lose them it's no big deal as they are backups from my main system which I want to wipe clean to get rid of all of the **** my 12 year old son has installed without my knowledge. :eek:

Thanks in advance,
Bill :t

[BipolarBill]

1. Good.

2. Create one small 100GB FAT32 partition on drive one. This will be the boot partition - C:. Partition the rest as FAT32 for Win9x - drive E:. Format drive two as NTFS during Win2K installation - drive D: Install Win9x first to E:\Windows.

3. No - make Win2k NTFS.

4. No way.

5. Store them on drive two until you're done setting up Win9x and then copy them back to one.

[Bill in SD, CA]

2. Create one small 100GB FAT32 partition on drive one. This will be the boot partition - C:.

100GB? Need some clarity here.

Bill :t

[BipolarBill]

My spell checker is broke! :p

I've been writing GB too much lately. It's actually 100MB. :D

[AllGamer]

Ok let me be more CLEAR also on my previous simplified response

Yes is possible

Yes you can keep NTFS in "C:"

there's no such thing in DOS when NTFS is the first partition

so NATURALLY D: becomes C: if D: = FAT/32

so if you want D: = C: to load 98 when you want, or Win2k from C: = C: when you want

for a poorsman solution

then all you need to do is swap HDD in BIOS C: <=> D: <=> C:

then use FDISK to set D: = Active

BTW, D: = C: at this point

and now you can do your things

and once setup is done

then you can switch BIOS back to D: <=> C: <=> D:

and now you have NTFS = "C:" (N/A in DOS)
and FAT/32 = "C:" ( D: )

so all you now need to do is edit BOOT.INI in the NTFS after you boot into Win2k

after that, you can now choose Win2k or Win98

:t

[BipolarBill]

That cleared things up! :p

[Bill in SD, CA]

I'll sleep on that tonight.

Bill

:eek:

[Bill in SD, CA]

OK, I slept on it.

I don't I can get my hands on that concept. :confused: Whoa!

Can I use my W2K disk to partition and format the HD to Fat 32? That would really make it a lot easier as I would just be able to sit back and relax. :D

Bill

[AllGamer]

you said you have 2nd HDD right?

there's no need to partition

just format 2nd HDD as FAT or fat32 and you are good to go

:t

[Bill in SD, CA]

I want to install win 98 on 1st. drive and W2K on 2nd.

Bill

[BipolarBill]

Run the Win2K setup and ignore it when Setup finds the old installation. Proceed with setup. It will ask you where you want it installed. At this point, you can delete and create partitions. Simply delete everything on drive 1 and then create a FAT32 partition. Let Setup format it (watch this happen) and bail out before it starts copying files.

Now boot up with a Win98 floppy and install.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Got a problem here.

I used win98 bootdisk and fdisk'd and formatted HD.

C: = 800 MB
E: = 20 GB
F: = 39 GB

Ran setup from the CD and it said that couldn't run. Said if I have NTFS then I needed a MS-DOS boot partition.

ERROR Message SU0013

I copied sys over to C: and retried. Got the same message.

Where do I go from here?

Bill

[BipolarBill]

Huh? Which CD are you booting from? You need to run setup from the Win98 floppy.