I am trying to configure my system to dual boot between Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional. I intend to create two partitions for these as follows 4GB based on FAT32 for windows 98 and 8GB NTFS partition for windows 2000. After using Fdisk to create a 4GB primary partition as drive C (activating large drive)and an 8GB extended partition with one logical drive D. I rebooted the system and formated the drive C, at completetion the drive was reported as 2.xxGB instead of 4GB. The windows 98 installation program hung up while trying to start the setup wizard after several attempts, I repartitioned drive C for 2GB and the installation went on successfully. Has any one out there experienced such a problem? If yes how did you resolve it. Or does it mean that the dos Format.com program cannot handle partitions larger than 2GB. Any usefull suggestions would be appreciated as I intend to complete the process this weekend.
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Dual Boot Wahala
- Thread starter NaijaMan
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I came across something similar to this, using the original Windows '98, but I've never seen this happen in SE. Moving to SE was how I got around the problem.
Just do a double check in FDISK to make sure that you have it as FAT32 and not FAT16, because (as I appreciate you may be aware), FAT16 cannot create partitions larger than 2Gb.
In answer to your secondary question, yes, FORMAT.COM can handle partitions larger than 2Gb; my own machine at home has a 30Gb and a 40Gb (partitioned as a 10 and a 30) and runs Windows 98SE quite happily.
Just do a double check in FDISK to make sure that you have it as FAT32 and not FAT16, because (as I appreciate you may be aware), FAT16 cannot create partitions larger than 2Gb.
In answer to your secondary question, yes, FORMAT.COM can handle partitions larger than 2Gb; my own machine at home has a 30Gb and a 40Gb (partitioned as a 10 and a 30) and runs Windows 98SE quite happily.
HugoGuessit
Technical User
I'd say that if you were able to create a partition set to 4 gig, then you already had large disk support enabled. I think your problem is that you were using a prior version of Format.com. Probably just need to get one that is from DOS 6.2 or later. If you have a system with Win 98SE available, use it create a win98 startup disk. That way you make sure you have all parts of the equation from the same version of dos.
good luck. hg
good luck. hg
- Thread starter
- #5
Thanks for all the suggestions I was able to resolve the 4GB problem by using partition magic 4.0 to create the partitions 4GB & 8GB I then formated the 4GB for FAT32 and installled Windows 98, the installation was smooth and successful. I then installed WINDOWS 2000 Professional into the unformated extended partition which has a logical drive d (created with FDISK) the installation appeared to be smooth and successful however when the system restarted an error message on missing/currupt system file was displayed and windows 2000 refused to start, I have not been able to resolve this as the repair option doesn't seem to fix anything. Does any one have a solution/suggestion on this? Could it be that the partition created with Partition magic 4.0 is incompatible with Windows 2000?
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