Re: XP and Windows SE dual boot

From: André Gulliksen (andre.gulliksen_at_start.no)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 19:43:59 +0100

The Truth wrote:
> Can anyone point me in the right direction of a how-to article on
> setting up a XP/W98se dual boot? Also, are there any pitfalls I
> should know about before hand. My current OS is the XP Home Edition.

As others have mentioned, installing 98SE after XP can cause problems. But
it should be doable. The major pitfalls are (in order): Repartitioning,
which can cause havoc on your system if you do not know what you are doing
and/or if you are unlucky (remember backups!), and boot loaders.

Windows 98 SE needs its own FAT32 partition. So you will need to have some
free space on one of your hard drives. This partition also needs to be a
primary partition rather than a logical partition, and it will also have to
be set to bootable from a suitable partition editor. If you can delete any
of your current partitions, or if you have free space, then this should be
no problem. If you need to resize any of your current partitions you will
need third party software, such as Partition Magic or Ghost.

The 98SE installer requires that the hard drive it is going to be installed
to is your primary master. This means that if your drive is _not_ then you
will have to physically rewire your drives during installation. Also, to
actually be able to run 98SE from anything but the primary master you will
need a boot loader that can logically swap the internal drives. LILO can do
this, other boot loaders I can not vouch for.

Even if you only wish to use the normal NT boot loader (which should be fine
for most cases), remember that the 98SE installation will overwrite any MBR
with it's own. To correct this you can use the XP installation CD, enter the
recovery console and type the command 'fixmbr'. Then you should alter your
c:\boot.ini to include your Windows 98SE installation. Of course, you can
use any other boot loader if you wish.

Relevant Pages

  • Glitches with FC3
    ... since the installation did not detect and mount them. ... drives and the linux partitions - which is what I really need the help with. ... the ntfs partition - though it appears in Gnome under the Computer ...
    (alt.os.linux.redhat)
  • Re: Extending a hard drive
    ... That created one 137 GB recognized and usable partition. ... of the disk WILL be recognized, but the disk space above 137 GB ... extent of calling Microsoft to validate the installation. ... The drives were just the way they left the ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: TP700C/3550 needs a boot in the ass.........
    ... linux partition on the ESDI drive, and a linux partition on the SCSI drive and I begin the automatic installation, will the installation continue to copy files to the SCSI drive when the ESDI drive is full? ... All other drives and NFS expors are mounted into directories - I'm sure you have seen that as you used NFS already;o) And the same with the second hard disk: You will have to mount it somewhere. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware)
  • Re: Getting rid of dual boot setup?
    ... >> move a Windows installation freely from one partition to ... That puts the clone HD ... > many hard drives, and by manipulating the boot sequence (to ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: XP and Windows SE dual boot
    ... > free space on one of your hard drives. ... > primary partition rather than a logical partition, ... > will have to physically rewire your drives during installation. ... > need a boot loader that can logically swap the internal drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)