Installing another Operating system

[piers]

I need serious help!! My current PC's operating system is Windows NT 4.0 but NT does not allow me to play games.. I would like to install Windows 98 but still keep my current O/S. My PC's specs are Pentum 166 mhz, hard disk is 3 Gb with RAM of 48mb. My ideal situation is that when i start my computer, i will have booting choices of either NT or win 98 to suit my needs.. System Commander could not help me as it cannot be installed into NT. I am really desperate now?? Any suggestions or help would be really appreciated...
Thanx

[piers]

And also, I forgot to mention that my PC has two hard disks,one disk(1.99Gb)is for NT O/S which is in NTFS format and one more disk which is free(1.19Gb, maybe for Win 98?)which is in FAT format.
Thank you so much.
Piers

[jeana]

I've never done a dual boot with NT, but a good freeware alternative to system commander is Ranish partition manager (do a search from altavista and pick a download site that seems trustworthy).

Before you use it though, make sure you save your current master boot record to a bootable floppy that also has partition manager on it!

Actually, here's a site:
mirriwinni.cse.rmit.edu.au/~ranish/part/ (http://mirriwinni.cse.rmit.edu.au/~ranish/part/)

It does look like it can handle NT dual boots! If you install the Advanced Boot Manager and use some of Ranish's examples as a template for your setup you'll get a neat little boot menu.


[This message has been edited by jeana (edited 07-05-99).]

[BBA]

Just install Win98 on the FAT drive and then edit the Win NT boot.ini file to give the choice of dual booting to Win9x/NT

The combo works good.

BBA

[Scott Evans]

You mean MS will let you install Win9X on a partition other than Primary C: nowadays?
Really?

Don't Win9X need to be on the first primary partition of the first hard disk, along with the NT boot files?

Partition Magic has (IBM)Boot Manager, is good stuff, would be able to make two Primary c: partitions with one being hidden, and if OS/2 fdisk is used three primary (two hidden) partitions per disk can be had, as the extended partition isn't a primary.

Scott, who once had two Win95's, one OS/2, one NT and a Linux all bootable on one disk. Talk about overkill........

[BBA]

Why yes, Win98 will load onto a FAT partition on a NT machine! At least my version will, I have the select versions of Win98 and Win98SE. I never had a problem installing it fresh onto NT in dual boot or WIN95 upgrade or as a stand alone.

Maybe I missed something in the retail Win98 world!

But if it doesn't work for your particular case, all you have to do is set the FAT partition as active thru dos fdisk, copy system files to it, reboot and then install Win98. This will fake out the PC into making the other (FAT16) partition the "C" drive, then reset the NT partition as active afterward and boot into NT. Now you can modify the boot.ini to allow a Win98 boot.

Hmmm.... sounds too easy huh?

If you want the really easy way to do it, just delete the NT partition, install Win98 alone, then recover the NT partition and install NT again, it will automatically set up the dual boot option!

BBA




[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 07-06-99).]

[philipg]

This is the only method I know works and I believe it is the only one too. First back-up all your NT as if it fails you can put everything back to the way it was. First off Partition Magic below the 4.0 version doesn't support NT and 98 dual boot very well. Second if Nt is already istalled you can't install 98 unless you set every thing to fat16 and also win98 won't let you install it if there's already an operating system installed, you will have to set install win98 then NT and when prompted in the NT install about a dual boot say yes and let NT install into a FAT 16 drive.

If anyone else sees this as not correct please advise as this was the only way I could get this config to work.

[piers]

Hey people,
Thank you so much for your suggestions.. I will now try and see whether it is achievable. I will probably post a reply stating which method is a successful one. OPnce again thank you very much for the help and do wish me luck..........

Piers