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Invalid system disk with dual boot

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logan2772

MIS
Jul 19, 2001
17
US
Recently we decided to dual boot with win98se and win2k pro. Everything was working fine we partitioned the harddrive and installed each os on different partitions. We were able to boot into either one. After We installed sp1 and sp2 on Win2k and then installed norton utilities. When we tried to boot to win98se we got "invalid system disk" I was wondering since I am not familiar with win2k if someone would have any input. I checked the msdos.sys and everything looks fine I haven't checked out the boot.ini yet.
 
You get the boot menu correct? Did you make a ERD in Win2K? If not I suggest you do that before you try anything. Can you see the \Windows AND \WINNT folders? Look in the \Windows folder and see if the Win.com file is there. What file sytem is Win2K running? FAT32 or NTFS? Are both versions of Windows on the same partition? James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.
 
Yes both folders are there. Windows is on c: drive and Winnt is on the d: drive. Unfortunately my coworker decided to reformat so I can't tell you if the win.com was there. Win2k was setup with fat32 and we did make an ERD. If you could explain to me what exactly happens when you dual boot such as what system files are created or modified and what could keep win98 from booting up.I tried to fix the msdos.sys by renaming and sys c; but ended up booting into win98 only, the menu did not even come up. So we used the ERD and fixed the menu but put us back to not accessing win98.
 
It sounds as if the boot path was lost for the NTLoader. I am not sure what happened. Sys C: then doing a repair with the ERD SHOULD have repaired both OS paths. But now that he has formated it I guess the point is mute. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.
 
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