Booting from second hard drive 2

[charlie9]

I have Win98 installed on my 6Gb C: drive. (Fat32 files).
I also have a second drive D: 20 Gb which I use as a backup to C: drive.

I would like to install Win 2000 on D: drive and then have a dual boot system i.e. boot from Win98 on C: drive or Win2000 on D: Drive. Is this possible. If so, how do I go about doing it?

 

[WheeDoggy]

this should help:

http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/software/windows/dual/

 

[charlie9]

Thanks for the url. I found it helpful. The web page is about dual booting Win98 and Win2K from the same hard drive. What I would like to know is whether it is possible to boot Win2K from the second (slave) drive.

Has anyone done this successfully or otherwise?

 

[wolluf]

Its basically the same process. Install 98 on 1st drive (your situation) - then install 2k on second drive. This will create a 2k boot sector on first drive and 2k boot menu as per both on same drive.

Alternatively, you could use a boot manager (I recommend the one at

http://www.boot-us.com

- free for personal use). This will allow you to install both operating systems independently (using the 2k boot manager/menu, if you remove or damage the 98 installation your 2k won't boot as boot use the same boot sector on the C: drive).

For a 2 drive situation using boot-us, just install 2k on seocnd drive with 1st drive disconnected. Once complete, reconnect 1st drive - machine will boot into 98 - and install boot-us. Run it to set up your dual boot menu (you can save this to floppy to test it out before saving to either the mbr or a spare partition on the hard drive).

 

[charlie9]

wolluf, thanks for reply. Together with info on boot-us.com, you have answered my question. The boot-us boot manager seems to be the way to go.

 

[charlie9]

wolluf,

I carried out procedure as you suggested.
I disconnected 1st drive, installed 2k ok on 2nd drive after 3 attempts.
I reconnected 1st drive - it booted ok in 98 and I could access 2nd drive.
I did the boot-us install using floppy drive.
Again 98 booted ok.
Then my problems began.
Problem 1 - 2k would not boot - error msg can't find system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Problem 2 - I rebooted to 98. I can no longer see 2nd drive.
Problem 3 - floppy disk with bootus programs has format error.
Problem 4 - 9 tries out ten, 1st drive will freeze just before win 98 completes it boot up.

First question is how do I get the master drive to see slave drive again? BIOS sees it but not Device mangager?

 

[wolluf]

You said it took 3 attempts to install win2k - why? (were there problems? - if so, what).

Did you install 2k on fat32 or ntfs?

I'm suspecting you have hardware problem(s) (eg RAM). Has your 98 installation been generally well behaved prior to this?

Few things - can you boot 2k if you disconnect 98 drive?
Does 98 boot if you disconnect 2k drive?
Create a 2k boot floppy - copy ntldr & ntdetect.com (from \i386 on install CD to newly formatted floppy. Also boot.ini - create one looking like this with notepad:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Disk2 " /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Disk1 " /fastdetect

(you can use this to try booting with 98 drive connected (so choose disk2 option) or disconnected (disk1 option)

 

[charlie9]

wolluf - some answers to your questions

Q. You said it took 3 attempts to install win2k - why? (were there problems? - if so, what).

A. Yes there was a problem - 2k installed files and then found a problem and asked me to reboot. I got the same message about 3 times but after that it worked.

Q. Did you install 2k on fat32 or ntfs?

A. both disks are fat 32.

Q. I'm suspecting you have hardware problem(s) (eg RAM). Has your 98 installation been generally well behaved prior to this?

A. Yes

Q. Few things - can you boot 2k if you disconnect 98 drive?

A. yes. Also if I change the boot sequence in bios without disconnecting the drive, 2k boots ok (without 2k loader coming up)and I can see 98 drive.

Q. Does 98 boot if you disconnect 2k drive?

A. Here I have 2 problems with both drives connected.

Problem 1: When the boot sequence in bios is set to the 98 drive, although bios recognizes both drives, the loader only recognizes the 98 drive (6Gb). So does FDisk and any other program. One thought is that the partition table has been modified by bootus to hide the second drive.(by adding 10h to the partition Id) When I use bootusc, it says that there is only one disk, the unhide command says that there is no disk to unhide and the bootmanager command says that the boot manager is not installed. Should I get a disk editor to check the partition table in the boot sector. If so, what would be a good disk editor to use?

Problem 2: It takes about 10 reboots before win98 completes its startup. It freezes just before completion with mouse cursor moveable but no response to mouse clicks.

Q. Create a 2k boot floppy - copy ntldr & ntdetect.com (from \i386 on install CD to newly formatted floppy. Also boot.ini - create one looking like this with notepad:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Disk2 " /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Disk1 " /fastdetect

(you can use this to try booting with 98 drive connected (so choose disk2 option) or disconnected (disk1 option)

A. I will give this a go.

I usually use 98 not 2k and use the second drive to backup my data, so I would like to solve the problem of the 98 not seeing the second drive.

Thanks for your advice. If you can help any further, I would be much appreciated.

Noel

 

[charlie9]

wolluf,

Futher to my last reply, I have used a disk editor to view the boot sector on my 98 drive. The partition table only has one entry.

Should it have 2 entries if it is to know about my second physical drive or is this information stored somewhere else?

e.g. the bios knows I have 2 physical drives, but how is the os to know that I have a second drive?

Noel

 

[wolluf]

Have you got the jumpers on the 2 drives set correctly? Ie, master and slave or both cable select. Some drives have different settings as master when there is or isn't a slave present.

The partition table on first drive should only have one entry - the second drive has its own partition table - they've got nothing to do with each other. As the second drive will boot on its own, its partition is obviously not hidden & it must also be active. Which is why the question about the jumpers - sounds like something odd going on when both drives connected (normally the first active partition on the first boot device as defined in the bios is booted - but with a boot manager like boot-us you can change that).

Another thing you could try is connecting each drive to separate IDE channels - both as masters - and see if 98 works ok then.

PS. I don't know what you use PC for, but if you like stability, would recommend using 2k as main operating system (I abandoned 98 for NT in 99, then 2k when it came out. No way would I use 98 except to run the odd app that's no good in 2k - which is exactly what I do)
btw - I have 6 o/s multibooting with boot-us currently (down from 8), including 98 and 2k & never a problem.

 

[charlie9]

wolluf

Thanks again for your advice. You are right about being a hardware problem. I finally traced the problems to the disk ribbon cable, after 3 wasted days, but I learnt alot. Now fixed and working.

I have decided not to use boot manager at this stage and just change boot sequence in bios. Works well.

win 98 has been very stable for me, but I will migrate to 2k in due course.

cheers

Noel

 

[charlie9]

wolluf

Thanks again for your advice. You are right about being a hardware problem. I finally traced the problems to the disk ribbon cable, after 3 wasted days, but I learnt alot. Now fixed and working.

I have decided not to use boot manager at this stage and just change boot sequence in bios. Works well.

win 98 has been very stable for me, but I will migrate to 2k in due course.

cheers

Noel