Frustration over WinXP/Win 98 dual boot

[catback]

Hi,

I have a 100 gig drive that was initially partitioned as such:

Partition A (boot partition): 10 gig, WinXP Home on NTFS
Partition B (data partition): 90 gig, Fat32

I recently had the need to add a third partition running Win98 SE. I purchased PartitionMagic v7 and restructured the partitions as such:

Partition A: same as above
Partition B: 10 gig, Win98 SE on Fat32
Partition C: 80 gig, Fat32

I was able to dual boot between partitions A(WinXP) and B(Win98) just fine using the BootMagic utility that came with PartitionMagic. The problem started when the Win98 partition became corrupted and I had to format and reload Win98. Now BootMagic gives me an error saying it can not find a required file (doesn't specify) and as a result can only boot into the Win98 partition. The emergency floppy disk for BootMagic does allow me to manually select either partition but if I boot without the floppy, I keep getting the error message. Can anyone provide suggestions on what I can do to regain the dual boot option?

Thanks.

[mdk]

I hate to say this, but I've always heard that for a dual boot system you need to install the newest operating system Last. I have 2 dual boot systems, Win98/Win2K and Win2K/WinXP. I've always installed the newer OS last and everything is fine.


Here's a quote from support.microsoft.com:

You have to install Windows XP only after installing MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me to prevent these operating systems from overwriting the Windows XP boot sector and the Windows XP startup files.

[ppera2]

I have 3 OS - Win98, XP and Linux. Boot Manager is Boot Magic, and it works very well over 3 years (earlier was Win2000). I had couple system crashes too in meantime. But always recovered partition and Boot Manager very fast.

I suggest that you simple boot in partition which you can, and reinstall Boot Magic.

When installing OS-es on different partitions it will never overwrite boot sector of other OS or system files. But our 'kind' M$ will overwrite Master Boot Record where is Boot Manager placed, so we lose it. Solution is rescue floppy, or simple copy MBR somewhere and restore it after OS installation (with Disk Editor for example).

[mic]

As ppera2 wrote, usually you'd want something like 98 SE on your first partition, xp on the second & installed last. Also, done that way xp provides the bootloader which while not as good, is one less piece of software to worry about.

If you wanted to go that route, I'd create a disk image of partitions a & b using ghost [I think the older version 2001 *might* work better re: xp activation] -> wipe the two partitions -> restore the images to swapped partitions (ie: xp on b) -> make sure 98 starts -> do an xp repair-only install.

Otherwise I'd try reinstalling the boot mgr, or perhaps what I'd look at is what's on the boot disk that's not on your hard drive? If everything looks identical, I'd try replacing the files on the hard drive with those from the boot disk, copying the originals to a new tmp folder just in case. Might also try the install-repair option for XP.

FWIW, Xp is fairly resilent - I've moved an xp pro install from one drive to another, upgraded versions etc. without a lot of hassle, and have run XP & 98SE on the same drive & partition for a couple of years now, the point being you shouldn't worry about losing your XP install too much - it should hold up pretty well whichever options you choose.