98/XP Dual Boot...Can't Get 98...No Floppy

[koldkane]

Hi All,

I have a Dell PIII 500 with 512 Ram.
I'm dual booting...Win98 off one primary partitioned 14 gig hard drive and XP off another slave partitioned 40 gig HD.
I was working with a music making app in Win98 when I got a blue screen...after rebooting and getting to my dual boot screen to choose my OS, I chose
Win98. I got the "Invalid System Disk" error. Checked to see that there was no floppy in and there wasn't. Same error just kept happening. Tried booting to XP and there was no problem. I checked to see if my A drive was there and it wasn't. Tried swapping the floppy with a good one from an old PC and had the same problem. Reseated the cables, same problem.
When I boot into XP I can open, close and work with files off the other hard drive with Win98 on it. Yet the A drive doesn't show up under XP.
I guess my question is …even if my A drive can’t be accessed why do I get that invalid disk
Error when trying to boot into the Win98 HD and yet have no problem getting into the XP HD?
And what the heck can I do about it? I’m stumped.
I thought about going into CMOS and setting my boot sequence to start with my CD drive
and reinstalling Win98, but I don’t know if that will screw things up altogether. If after that
I may not be able to even get into XP and I’ll be screwed!
Any ideas???

Much thanks!!!! Koldkane

 

[Ladygnome]

Check your BIOS to see if there are any problems seeing the floppy drive. Just make note of what you change anything from and to and if you make a mistake and aren't sure what you have done, then just Esc and don't save it and try again. Also check Control Panel, System, Devices to see if there are any errors re the floppy drive.
Also see if it is showing up under drive B:

 

[koldkane]

Hi Ladyg...under Contol Panel fom XP there is no A drive listed at all...shows disk controller with no errors, but no actual drive!? Also just recently noticed I don't have a boot.ini file on my C drive. Shouldn't there be one?

 

[koldkane]

Ok....I created a boot CD, booted from it and typed SYS C:
Restarted and Win98 booted successfully, yay. And I can see my A: drive now, although it still doesn't work, must have got fried somehow?
So then I booted to WinXP CD to repair the boot loader.
Chooose Repair
Chose 1
Put in my password
My XP is on the 2nd HD in the 1st. partition G:
At the G:/Windows prompt I typed FIXBOOT C:
Confirmed that it was repaired.
Restarted and got my boot screen back with my 98 and XP coices
Chose 98 and dang if it didn't come up with the same error:
Invalid System Disk!!!!???

Any other ideas?

BTW...in setup here is what my boot section looks like:
Boot-time Diagnostic Screen: Disabled
QuikBoot Mode: Disabled
Restore on AC/PowerLoss: Last State
On Lan: Power On
First Boot Device: Removable Device
Second Boot Deice: Hard Drive
Third Boot Device: CD-ROM Drive
Forth Boot Device: Network Boot
>Hard Drive
>Removable Devices

Cheers...k

 

[Freestone]

Perhaps you have a virus lurking somewhere.

Online scans available at:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

 

[bcastner]

Lets get your floppy working, as you have the floppy drive "first removable device" as the first boot choice.

At system start hit F2 to get into BIOS setup. Hit Alt-F and then Alt-E and save your changes to the BIOS.

 

[koldkane]

Hey bcastner...what will this do?

 

[wolluf]

A note about sys C:, fixboot C: and dual boot. sys C: will create a win 98 boot sector, and fixboot C: will create an XP boot sector. But to dual boot, you'll need an XP boot sector, and a copy of the win98 boot sector created in a file called bootsect.dos (XP creates this when you install on second drive/partition with 98 on the first) - and an entry in boot.ini like
C:\="Windows 98"

(boot.ini & bootsect.dos in root of C.

sounds like bootsect.dos and/or boot.ini is deleted/corrupted. You can recreate bootsect.dos - help here

http://www.petri.co.il/install_win98_after_xp.htm

As bcastner says - getting your floppy working is a good idea.

 

[koldkane]

Thanks wolluf...re: getting the flooppy drive working"...if I do the alt+f alt+e that gets me to my default BIOS settings correct? My question about that is I had upgraded my bios from Dell a couple of years ago...will it wipe that out? Also do I have to have the removable device highlited or anything? Or do these alt's just default the whole bios?

And re: the boot.ini and bootsect.dos files....I have them.
This is the situation I'm in now...I'm in Win98 now after doing a SYS C:, but of course I don't get my dual boot screen, Win98 just loads on restart. If I go into XP Recovery Console and repair the bootsect, I get my dual boot screen back and can boot into XP but I'm back to an Invalid System Disk error trying to get into Win98...so by fixing one , I wreck the other?!?!
Catch-22!
Thanks buddy!

 

[wolluf]

I'm not familiar with those shortcuts that bcastner suggested - but they won't affect the bios upgrade - just the settings. I presume they're just a way to select bios settings (but you'd know better than me). Can you just get into the bios settings and navigate to the place you want? As far as i can see, you just want to make sure floppy is enabled, and first boot device - then try booting from a win98 boot floppy to see if its working. If its not, and you're sure cable ok and properly connected (and you've tried another known good drive), would sound like the contoller on mobo has gone. If it is working - but not appearing in XP, suggests XP is damaged. Might be worth trying a repair reinstall (

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341)

- which should also restore your dual boot (I'd move the bootsect.dos file elsewhere before doing this - its possibly corrupted, and I'm not sure if repair will overwrite existing one or not.

hth