Multi-Booting with XP and 98

[Baez]

ya the boot.ini determines every OS installed so i have to figure out what to insert in that to get 98 to run. NT tends to overwrite older 9x files

 

[EricB]

ya, win98 uses the old DOS method of booting, winXP uses the NT method which is different and should work ok as long as its installed second........I think? Doesnt XP have a tiny little NT boot partition with some .ini files and stuff in it?

yep

 

[EricB]

I forgot a trick I did once to install different os. i set the bios toc boot from different harddrives. I have xp and vista on 1 ide hard drive and MCE 2005 on a sata. I bet you can do that.

 

[TheRecluse]

lol ya i know now too. problem is that a few of my older programs dont run with the backward compatibility function xp came with so now im stuck installing it after

...what kind of programs do you have that won't work on XP? if it's that old of a program, maybe you should consider upgrading...

 

[Baez]

i have a few games that i wanted to run again, i need to call up old tax reports that dont work with my 2005 version (called the company and they said there new version only works up to their 1998 version. they said they have had a lot of calls about that. i think they should have thought of that before releasing it) and an old file manager that i tried to dl but doesnt work with 2000 and up (forget the name of it) that is much better than the new versions. having a 250 gig hard drive its hard to keep everything where its supposed to be

i'll try what u said Eric cuz that sounds like it might work... this is way more complicated than i wanted it to be!!! hehe

 

[Amd2800]

this is were there is a problem ..windows 98 over writes Xps Master boot record so u have to install 98 and then do a repair on XP but after the repair u may need to reinstall drivers

 

[Baez]

what if i detached the hard-drive containing xp. mbr is on the hd right? or is it loaded into the rom chip? then i could install 98 after the other hard-drive is off

 

[pharic]

Your friend's right, take out the xp disk, install 98 on the other disk. Then put xp in as the master and edit the xp boot.ini like this...

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
D:\="Windows 98"

I'm not 100% sure that 98 will boot from d:\ though. If your existing boot.ini is different to first few lines leave it like it is - all you're doing is adding the D:\"Windows 98"

EDIT: Hang on, I just tried it with an old windows95(!) disk and it said it couldn't find hal.dll, I'll investigate further...

 

[Baez]

k thanx. i thot that for windows 98 you had to type the same as the windows xp line tho where u have to tell it how many partitions there are. or is that because 98 didnt use boot.ini?