Multi-boot with Windows 98SE and Windows XP-Professional

[trichard]

Computer: Custom Built
Processor: Intel P4 1.6Ghz
Current OS: Windows 98 4.10.2222 A (aka. SE)
Hard Drive: 40Gb
User: 17 year-old Student
Major: Computer Technology
Goal: Multi-boot with Windows 98SE and Windows XP-Professional

Around July 7th 2002 my computer was running fine with Windows 98SE. I learned in school about partitioning hard drives, so I decided that I wanted to try installing Microsoft XP on a seperate partition. I created the partition using Partition Magic 7.0 and all was good until I tried to install XP-Professional. During the setup process there was an error. (Error in line 1 of docuement, then it lists files: controls.cat, controls.man, control.ex_, control.cs_, and control.js_) Somehow, I forgot, I got around this and installed XP-Professional on my (F partition, the created one. I set it up for an NTFS.
At this point, my computer contained two hard drives: (C: which contains the files that I had when I used Windows 98 at first, and F: which has Windows XP-Professional.) My goal was to multi-boot and I couldn't, the computer would boot directly to XP-Pro. I went into my boot.ini file and added a line; "C:\Windows". Saved and restarted. Receieved an I/O error. I went back into XP-Pro and re-edited the boot.ini to its original state, and it booted to XP-Pro. At this point, I'm able to access all of the files on my computer, but I can't multi-boot. I like to play games and the games that I had were not working on XP for a variety of reasons: DirectX being a key reason. So I decided that I was going to try and remove the Windows 98 Partition and Re-Install it so that maybe I could multi-boot and play games on that partition and work on my school work and stuff with the XP partition. I couldn't re-install Windows 98. I think that this is, because when I had to cancel the XP-Partition in the first place it had overwritten the Windows 98SE system files and because it was an NTFS partition I was able to access the files. So I went and overwrote those XP system files with the system files of Windows 98SE, which brings me to my current state. My 40 gigabyte hard drive is now being recognized as 15 (the other 25gb preceived to be the NTFS partition, but is unseen and therefor unaccessable). Once again my goal is that I would like to try and being able to multi-boot with Windows 98SE and XP-Pro and be able to use all of the space that my hard drive contains.

Thanks a whole lot for reviewing my problem. Any resolutions and questions are more than welcome.

Current state: Using Windows 98 Second Edition, with "cut-off" hard drive space.

 

[wolluf]

Start the XP installation off from windows 98, and choose the options to clean install and let you choose where to install the operating system. After its written some files to hard drive & rebooted it will prompt you for destination (if previous XP still there it may ask if you want to repair - don't). When it displays partitions, should be 2 - the FAt32 for win98 and NTFS. Remove the NTFS one with tools provided (highlight and D key), and then create a new one with same tools. Select this to install XP. This should all work ok, and you should end up with a dual boot at the end of it. Remember your boot sector files will all be on the C: (win98) partition - so if you format that partition later, XP won't boot (you can make an XP boot floppy to guard against this - copy ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini to newly formatted floppy).

PS. I personally use a third party boot manager, which enables you to make the operating systems properly independent of each other (

http://www.boot-us.com

- free for personal use - Partition Magic has its own included - BootMagic).

 

[trichard]

Hey wolluf thanks for replying and I'll be sure to try your resolution shortly. From what I preceive, you want me to do a clean install on the XP partition that I have right now, but I want to keep the files that I have on my XP parition. So I was just wondering that when you said not to do a repair on the previous XP, that if I did do a repair the computer would still be able to multi-boot and I would have all of my files accessible.

 

[wolluf]

To create a multi-boot win98/XP the XP install process copies the win98 boot sector to a file which it saves in the root of the C; drive (called bootsect.dos, or bootsect.w98 or similar). I don't think it does this during the repair process (but I may be wrong, because XP's repair basically installs bck on top of itself, keeping all existing settings - very similar to original install).

If your XP installation just needs a boot sector, you could use my third party boot manager, after creating boot sector for XP partition (it will need to be a primary partition for this to work - if its not, Partition Magic can convert it):-

1. If ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini files still exist in root of c: (98) drive - good. If not, you'll need to create a boot.ini file using a text editor (notepad) looking like this (no entry for win98):-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

2. Boot from XP install CD and select repair using recovery console (you'll need administrator password). Now copy (use recovery console's copy utility) ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini to root of XP partition (F:? -). If not on C: drive, copy ntldr & ntdetect.com from \i386 on XP install CD & boot.ini from where you saved it. Now type fixboot F: (assuming XP is still on F: but wherever it said it was when you logged into recovery console - you can run diskpart command to see what partitions and drive letters there are). Now reboot (type exit) back into win98.

3. Download and install boot-us. Set up boot menu using boot-us GUI (straightforward) - I'd recommend saving to floppy until you're happy - then mbr - but its up to you. Reboot, and you should be able to boot into either 98 or XP.