Re: HOWTO Remove Win98 from a Dual-Boot System with Win2K


"Adrian Herscu" <bmf1972@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eLcnduYFGHA.3532@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi all,
>
> I have a computer with two hard-disks (HD1 and HD2):
> HD1: Has one FAT32 partition and hosts a Win98 installation
> HD2: Has four NTFS partitions and the first one hosts a Win2K installation
>
> I want to completely remove the Win98 installation and of course use HD1
> for other purposes (such as storing the pagefile.sys of Win2K).
>
> I tried to find some article but most "dual boot" articles talk about
> how to setup a dual-boot system, and those articles which talk about
> removing Win98 do not seem to fit my situation.
> (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q285480/
> http://www.petri.co.il/remove_windows_98.htm)
>
> I am afraid that after following the described procedure I will remain
> with an unbootable system.
>
> Please help,
> Adrian.

Many people create a multibooting Win98/Win2000 installation
in a somewhat euphoric mood by placing Win2000 on a drive
other than C:, not realising that this sets the scene for some nice
little problems later on. Yours is one of them. There are two
issues you must resolve:
a) You must make Disk 2 bootable. This is easy.
b) You must maintain the system drive letter for Win2000.
This is much harder.

Make Disk 2 bootable
===============
- Boot into Win2000.
- Run diskmgr.msc (Start / Run) and make the system
partition of Disk 2 active.
- Copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
to the root of the Win2000 system partition on Disk 2.
- Run this command: notepad.exe d:\boot.ini and modify
the two strings so that they look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Maintain the System Drive Letter
======================
- Start a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd).
- Type set system and make a note of SystemRoot.
- Copy d:\WinNT\system32\userinit.exe to the
WinNT\system32 folder on your remaining drives on Disk 2.
You will, of course, have to make these folders.
- Turn off the machine.
- Remove the Win98 disk.
- Make the Win2000 disk the primary master disk.
- Boot into Win2000.
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK} and type set system.
I expect that the drive letter is different from what it was
above, probably C:. If it's the same as before, fine. If it is
not then you must change it immediately.
- Run regedit.exe
- Navigate to HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices/
- Identify the key DosDevice: that has the incorrect system
drive letter.
- Rename it to what it was before (probably \DosDevices\D:)
If there is some other value with this letter, delete it.
- Reboot the machine.

Win2000 will now run off drive D: again, even though it is the
first partition on the disk. Use diskmgmt.msc to give the remaining
partitions the drive letters you like.


.

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