Dual Boot Dilemma

[Jeffrey]

I decided, for mostly gaming reasons, to repartition my 80gb hd to one 55gb primary, one 20gb non-dos partition(evidently, my harddrive isnt 80gb as advertised).

All of the partitions were primary partitions.

I installed XP on the first partition, C:, and from XP I partitioned the 20gb partition into a 15gb primary and a 5gb primary, bot FAT32.

I installed Windows 98 on the second partition overall (15gb) and it ran fine. I added it to Boot.ini in XP.

The problem is, whenever I set my main NTFS 55gb partition as active, I get a boot screen, as I should. Whenever I select Win 98 from the screen, it complains about not having the necessary dlls in the system folder (ntoskrnl.exe, etc.) and when I download these files, it just replies with a "Load needed DLLs for kernel" software error. XP works just fine.

Now, get this, when I switch my active partition to my smaller, 15gb win98 partition, windows 98 works just fine (of course now I have no boot menu).

So basically, I can get into Windows 98 if I set its partition as active, and I can get into XP if I set its partition as active, but Win98 then complains about missing DLLs.

Here is my boot.ini

[optimize]

I don't have expierence with dual booting so I can't help you there,
But you were saying how your 80gb harddrive wasn't really 80gb -

Well the reason is, some harddrive makers call a megabyte 1000bytes, when really its 1024bytes. Although it may not seem like a big difference, when you're talking about space that big (gigabytes) it is

[DarkerLine]

a kilobyte is 1000 or 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1000000 or 1048576 bytes.

[Arcane Wizard]

I'm thinking win98 is looking for the dll's in a specific path (let's say c:\) but because the order of the partitions is different from when the winxp partition is the active one the partitons are named differently as well so it should be looking in a different path.

Also, you said you made 2 primary partitions in the extended non-dos partition, but you can only have 1 primary partition and you had already made one.

I think the key to fixing this is not changing the active partition after installing the operating systems or changing the having-3-primary-partitions-which-isn't-quite-possible situation...

Create the 55gb primary partition.
Set this partition as active.
Create two extended partition from what's left on the drive.
Then install the operating systems and leave the active partition alone.

[AlienCC]

You can actually have up to 4 primary partitions, but you have to use partitioning tools such as those that come with linux (not windows), in order to achieve this.

If you create an extended partition that counts against one of your primary partitions leaving only 3.

What I'm wondering is why you need Windows 98 when you have XP?

--AlienCC

[Arcane Wizard]

I was assuming he used fdisk.

[leofox]

[AlienCC]

[Arcane Wizard]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h.../appcompat.mspx

[NETWizz]

Okay, AlienCC brings up a very good pooint.

On any hard drive you have, it is going to be an MBR type of drive with room for 4 partitions.

FDISK will allow only 1 Primary and 1 Extended if I remember correctly.

DiskPart (comes with win2000 $ XP) will let you have more partitions up to 4, but it doesn't really tell you much about them.

You see, diskpart is dumb. It only makes one kind of partition.

It will make NTFS or FAT32 (?) I am actually assuming formatting sets the type byte becuase ti gives you a choice of ntfs or fat32.

To make a long story short, use fdisk in linux.

fdisk /dev/hda for the first ide drive

m prints help
n makes new
p for primary or e for extended
1 -4

...

p to show

If satisfied, w to write if not you can just quit.


If making a windows partition, be sure to set the type byte 07 for NTFS and if you need FAT32, look it up :)


Fdisk is very mature and easy to use. It holds your hand.

_______________________

Procedure to duel boot windows 98/xp is as follows

Install 98 but leave unpartitioned space.

With win98 running, insert the XP CD.


Tell it you want to install a second OS or new partition... whatever. Just don't choose to upgrade.

It asks you some questions... and then has you reboot with the CD in the drive.

From there it walks you through creating your XP partition, formatting it, copying the files, setting up XP and automatically sets up the boot.ini file and marks the new XP partition active.

Durring boot up, it will ask you Win98 or XP XP will be default.


____________________________________

Now that it is too late, I would boot to a 98 startup disk and run
fdisk /mbr

and make sure your 98 partition is active.

Now, XP should be invisible to your computer which will boot 98.

From there boot to XP recovery console, edit boot.ini to add 98, mark your xp partition active, and then run the XP fixmbr command.

It should give you a boot menu and both should work.


If the shit continues to hit the fan, lthe LILO loader can be configured to boot XP or 98. It works great.