Dual Boot problem

[ghauser]

I have recently pirchased a new computer with Windows 98. Since I am finishing my Masters in computer information systems I felt pretty confident that I could solve most problems that come my way. In addition to my masters I am studying for my MCSE. Thes class practically require you to install Win NT on your system to pass. My instructor cautioned me that Windows 98 and NT do not like each other and suggested I get another hard drive to put NT on. Well to make a long story short and 2 weeks later I have discovered that there is no way to get Win 98 to allow any NT file no matter how temporary the NT file is on to the C:. My instructors have no clue on how to load NT with out formatting C:<fat32> to <fat16>. Can anyone suggest a way to load NT?

Greg Hauser

[lec169]

Ok, I am running a dual boot w98/nt40 with no problems. just load 98 first and then NT. NT takeover after 98 is loaded and will give you the option of having both systems. I have not not problems, I wanted to run more Operating Systems so I got System commander and I am running w98, nt40, Dos 6.22 and win 3.10. Getting ready to put Warp4.0 and Linux, but it can be done even without a store bought boot manager. NT is really a stable OS. I am running totatly FAT 16 on 14+GB on three drives. Also Most of my programs will share between OS's. Sometimes it is hard if the other OS Partition is not hidden. So I bought a store brand BootManager so I could hide the Other Operating systems. That way I only nedd to install programs only once on my system instead of have multiple copies of programs on my system. Hope this helps!


Lec

[ghauser]

Lec- Thank you for responding. But maybe I should have been more clear. Win98 when operated in its fat32 large file size is the kiss of death for NT, Yes you most certainly can run just about anything , including NT and a host of other os, on fat16. But forget it if you run fat32. Now my problem was I did not NOT want to flatten/format my new hard drive with all the new pre-loaded programs on it. Instead I purchased a 2nd hard drive thinking that I could easily throw NT on this. Not truly. There has been plenty of grief. In fact you might say I have become the resident class guru on dual boot. I thought NT would load its three crucial files ntboot.ini, NTDETECT.com, and NTloader.com on to the active partition I made on the 2nd drive. NOPE. It first looks to install these files temporarily on the c: drive and will not anywhere else. But with the c: driver in fat32 you can kiss that possibilitity good bye. Eventually I teamed up with several others students and we were able to do it through BIOS swapping and loading NT off a cd-rom to the active NTFS partition on the 2nd drive. However, this necessitaties BIOS swapping between win98 and NT. Third party vendors have all so far stated they can not deal with fat32 and NT. Maybe somebody can recommend one. This BIOS swapping gets old real quick....


Greg Hauser