Re: dual booting

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Colin Barnhorst (colinbarharst(nojunk)_at_msn.com)
Date: 11/06/04 

Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 23:11:41 -0700

You can't the way you are doing it.

A dual boot system is not a system in which you add a new operating system
by hooking up another hard drive that has Win98 files on it.

To have a dual boot system, you must start with Win98 installed on drive C:.
Then you must install (install, not add) Windows XP on a second partition
(or drive).

Win98 has no idea what XP is (Win98 came first). But XP knows what Win98 is
so when you install XP on a system that already has Win98 on it, XP detects
the Win98 partition and sets up a dual boot screen and provides for hiding
XP from Win98 so that Win98 doesn't try to "repair" that "other" partition
when Win98 is running.

If you try to install Win98 second it will just corrupt the XP system
because there was no XP when Win98 was written. It assumes XP is something
that needs to be fixed. If Win98 can see the XP partition, it will corrupt
it.

Having said that, there are third party programs like Partition Magic and
System Commander that can sort some of this out. I prefer another way,
which is to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 on XP to run Win98 as just another
window on my XP desktop. That way I can run both XP and Win98 at the same
time and exchange information between them. In a dual boot setup you can
only run one OS at any one time and you have to restart the computer to
change between them.

Whether you can take advantage of VPC 2004 depends on how much memory you
have. I would not try it with less than 384MB of ram and I think 512MB is
much better.

"sboruff" <sboruff@indy.rr.com> wrote in message
news:AE6780B6-C62A-4977-86ED-870BC617FB97@microsoft.com...
>I know this has been posted before but I still cant get it. I have windows
> xp on 40 gig hd that came with new computer. I have windows 98 on my old
> hd.
> I added my old hd and config master and slave with jumpers and cable.
> Changed bios to auto-detect didnt work. Changed to cable select still
> doesnt
> work. The old hard drive is showing up when xp starts as drive f. So how
> do
> I get both drives to show when I boot so I can choose which one I want to
> use
> --
> sboruff

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