Dual Boot 2000PRO/98SE

[FZWG]

Appreciate some assistance.
Have a friend's PC running W2000PRO.

He has another hard drive on which W98SE is installed, and would like to add this hard drive to the PC and dual boot.

The W2000PRO hard drive is is NTFS; the W98SE hard drive is FAT32.

Do not wish to overwrite the C:\BOOT.INI file on the W98SE hard drive.

How does one go about setting up this dual boot situation?

Can this be done without third party Boot Management software?

Is there a good website that provides some guidance?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[BipolarBill]

You need a third-party boot manager:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html


I don't recommend it though. I recommend using a drive caddy and mobile rack.

[Midknyte]

so you want to run win2k from the slave drive. but you don't want to mess with win98 on the primary?

you could make a bootdisk to point to win2k. Just need to create the proper ARC path. That's what I do in my mirror set, just in case the primary drive dies.

you need to format the floppy from win2k, then add the boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Win2K HDD2" /fastdetect

[FZWG]

Thanks for the replies.

"so you want to run win2k from the slave drive. but you don't want to mess with win98 on the primary?"

W98SE as Primary would be OK. It would not matter whether it or the HDD with 2000 PRO are Primary.


On: "you need to format the floppy from win2k, then add the boot.ini" Add the boot.ini where?? Might be over my head on this one...

Thanks for the help.

[BipolarBill]

All yours, MidKnyte!

[Midknyte]

add the boot.ini file to the floppy you just formatted. do you know how to edit boot.ini files? if not, then read this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311578

Again you need to make sure he formats the floppy from win2k, not win9x.

He needs to decide where each drive will go before you can create the proper boot.ini file.

Maybe it's easier to just get him a drive caddy like BPB said. Then he could just swap the drives as needed.

[r8500]

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong guys, couldn't he put the 98 drive in as primary, and the w2k drive as slave. THen boot to the w2k cd and run a repair on w2k so that it would give him a boot menu?

[Midknyte]

he said that he didn't want to mess with the win98 drive boot files, so I didn't suggest that. you are correct that he could run a repair to get a boot menu. If he wanted to put the win2k drive as primary, then he would just need to edit the boot.ini file to add the option of booting to the win98 drive.

[r8500]

Opps, I forgot he didn't want to mess with the current boot files.

[FZWG]

Thanks for the replies.

Ended up installing a caddy and rack.