Is there a way to downgrade from 2000 Pro to 98SE? I have a dual boot with both being 2000 Pro (one is FAT and one is NFTS). I want the FAT to be 98SE. Short of doing a Fdisk and format of the whole drive and reinstalling everything, can I do a format on the C drive (the one with FAT)and install 98SE and leave the F drive (the one with NFTS) alone with 2000 Pro.
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Dual boot with Win2000 Pro
- Thread starter goalema30
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You'd have to rebuild the boot loader if you did that. Assuming its normal, your current dual boot has its win2k boot sector on C:. So, if you format C: and install win98, you won't be able to boot win2k on F:. In order to do that, you could follow the procedure here (for XP read 2k).
PS. Insurance - make a win2k boot floppy - copy boot.ini, nrldr and ntdetect.com from root of C: to newly formatted floppy. This will boot your F: drive 2k even if boot sector gets removed/corrupted.
PPS. You could make F: drive 2k independently bootable (and use a third party boot manager - I recommend one at Copy same 3 files to root of F:. Boot 2k install CD and choose repair using recovery console. You'll need adminstrator password. At command prompt, type fixboot F:. If you now install a third part boot manager, it will be able to boot this 2k installation.
PPPS. You may have trouble installing win98 with 2k installed on second partition (98 set up sometimes doesn't like running when ntfs partition present). In this case, you need to hide the ntfs partition while installing 98. boot-us has tools to hide/unhide partitions.
PS. Insurance - make a win2k boot floppy - copy boot.ini, nrldr and ntdetect.com from root of C: to newly formatted floppy. This will boot your F: drive 2k even if boot sector gets removed/corrupted.
PPS. You could make F: drive 2k independently bootable (and use a third party boot manager - I recommend one at Copy same 3 files to root of F:. Boot 2k install CD and choose repair using recovery console. You'll need adminstrator password. At command prompt, type fixboot F:. If you now install a third part boot manager, it will be able to boot this 2k installation.
PPPS. You may have trouble installing win98 with 2k installed on second partition (98 set up sometimes doesn't like running when ntfs partition present). In this case, you need to hide the ntfs partition while installing 98. boot-us has tools to hide/unhide partitions.
A program that makes dual booting much simpler is an inexpensive application called boot it ng. You can use this partition manager for a 1 month trial for free. Download from I use it on all my dual boot systems and am very pleased with it. It allso has a built in disk imaging util. for making backups to cd-rom.
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