Issues installing a dual boot system

[catback]

Hi,

I have a PC with two internal hard drives. Win98 SE was first installed on the first drive(primary master) on a FAT32 partition. Win2000 Pro was then installed on the second drive (secondary master) on a NTFS partition. I had originally wanted to install both operating systems on the first drive but space limitations required to use the second drive for Windows2k.

This dual boot setup ran fine until recently when Win98 on the first drive became corrupted and required a reinstall. Well, now I am unable to access Windows2k on the second drive. I did a little reading up on this and apparently Windows2k creates a boot.ini file that it places on all partitions/drives that have another operating system. From what I understand, this file is required to access the Windows2k portion during boot-up.

Since my reinstall of Win98 erased this file, am I able to manually recreate this file or is my only recourse to go back and reinstall Win2k as well to recreate this file?

Thanks.

[OvERaCiD23]

Try using the Windows 2000 recovery console off the CD. Try FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. If those two commands don't work, you may have to repair your 2000 install. You're always supposed to install the newer OS after the older OS.

Also, I'm sure there is some documentation on this somewhere on the web. Try a Google search.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

take a look here
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/uninstall_win2k.htm

(the stuff on bootloader and what it does...)
here's my boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT=
"Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"


(not much fun..huh?)

if you lack some essential files to start w2k,let me know and i'll
send them over........

[markrb]

I use a much easier and cleaner method of dual boot.

If you have a bios that allows you to change the boot device this is what I do.

I will do a clean stand alone install for each OS on a different HD. The OS's have no idea the other is there.

All I do is go into my bios and change to the drive HDD-0 or HDD-1 that I want to boot from.

It adds a step, but if I want to re-install XP I have no worries about having to bother with 98 or vice versa.

Most Bios's in the last couple of years allow you to boot off any HD you want, even an onboard RAID set.

Mark

[tiki4]

Sorry for disturbing, but I'm dual and triple booting for maybe 3 years now. It's quite easy to repair your setup, so here we go:

1. Install Windows 98 on C:\ (your first HD), that's what you already did.

2. For booting Windows 2000 you need 3 files located in C:\. They are 'ntldr', 'ntdetect.com' and 'boot.ini'. You get the first two from the 'i386' folder of your Windows 2000 CD-ROM. If you have installed a service pack, you may need to replace them later by the ones from the service pack, I think you can only exctract its contents in Win2K, so more of that later.

3. The 'boot.ini' should look like the one above, except:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT

and

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

rdisk(1) stands for your second HD in the system.

4. The entry C:\ references a file called bootsect.dos, which is the original boot block of Windows 98 but gets distroyed if you use the recovery console with 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot', so what we do:

5. Download a tool called bootpart, you find it
here (http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm). This tools can repair your whole setup:

6. Boot to MS-DOS with a Win98 boot disk. First we will repair the boot sector of your HD, by the following command:

'bootpart winnt boot:c:'

Now we have a new Win2K boot sector on C:\

7. Adding Windows 98 is now very easy, just type:

'bootpart win98 c:\bootsect.dos "Microsoft Windows 98"'

This will generate a file 'c:\bootsect.dos' and add a line for Windows 98 to your boot.ini which looks like this:

'C:\bootsect.dos="Microsoft Windows 98" /win95'.

You may shorten that line to

'C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"'

that's enough.

After that reboot, you will now see two choices again in your Win2K boot menu.

Have fun!

tiki4

P.S: I forgot, if you want to replace the 'ntldr' and 'ntdetect.com' by more recent ones from a service pack (what you should do), then just extract the contents of the service pack to your HD, by running the service pack installer with the '-x' option. Just look for the two files and copy them to C:\