Re: (Dual-boot) Partition won't stay formatted


"Sam" <no@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:iSSRg.48110$uH6.32222@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a win98\xp setup, both on different drives. XP has two partitions -
ntfs\fat32. It's the fat32 I'm having trouble with, it won't stay
formatted.
If I use xp, 98 wants to format it. If I use 98 then they both want to
format it after re-boot. I want to setup a third OS. I can't use the 98
drive because it's too small for another partition and I rather not swap
the
OS's. Is there a way to make this work?

Thanks
Sam



I have a suspicion what the problem is, but it's way too complicated to
detail here. What I would suggest, however, is that you keep ALL OSes on
the first HD (as primary partitions), and any shared DATA (which I assume
the FAT32 partition is) on the second HD as one or more volumes in an
extended partition.

HD0/Part0: Win98
HD0/Part1: XP
HD1/Part0: Extended
HD1/Part0/Vol1: DATA

I'd be willing to bet if you did this, your problems would disappear.
Again, a bit to complicated to detail here, but the issue has to do w/ the
way the system makes drive letter assignments, esp. w/ the older Win98 OS.
What I've described above is the BEST way to avoid several problems that can
arise when configuring multiple HDs for multiple OSes and shared DATA.

Jim






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