Dual-Boot WinXP Pro & Win98 SE on One HDD

[DoomKingUK]

DoomKingUK here askin'...

I want to be able to boot from 'Winxp pro' or 'Win98 se' using ONE hdd.

Is this possible because i had xp pro installed and used 'Partition magic 8'
to "install another operating system" to install 'Win98se' thinking it wouldn't
change the xp partition cos fat32 doesn't see ntfs.

It worked great in 98se BUT i CANNOT boot from xp anymore
I tried setting the xp partition active using 'fdisk' then restarting. Xp started
to load up but i got 2 program files not found error with blue screen and it
just kept rebooting and trying again up to the same
point.

 

[Grotesque Puppet]

You need to edit the boot.ini file

 

[Mudvaynelethaldosage]

I have gotten a pc to dual boot two operating systems with the following method
- I put in a disk (Fix It utilities version 6) and shut down. On reboot, it went to a partition manager where I deleted my current XP partition.
-I then the disk to create two partitions on my hdd, one was fat32 and the other was ntfs.
-After taking the disk out and putting the 98 disk in, I rebooted and installed 98 on the fat32 partition.
- I repeated the process and installed XP on the NTFS partition.
On everyboot, I had to pick the OS or it would automatically pick XP in a set amount of seconds.
Not sure if that helped at all, it worked for me. I'm sure using a bootable disk would be much more effective than a program on your hdd.

 

[DoomKingUK]

Many thanks Mudvaynelethaldosage :)
I tried that & just got to b quick enuff 2 pick 98se if needed. The time it takes 2 decide can b changed anyway .. THANK YOU ;)

 

[rcgldr]

Without using partition manager, install 98 first then XP. If you install XP first, then you'd have to an XP repair. Note you need to have at least two partitions on the hard drive, one for each OS.

The partition sector code reads in the first sector, known as the boot sector, of the first active partition code. Windows ME and older OS's boot sectors read in IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, and Windows 98 renames files to switch between two sets of IO.SYS and MDSOS.SYS which switches to reboot in MSDOS or Windows 98. Windows NT, 2000, and XP read in NTLDR, which displays a menu from boot.ini and if the older OS is choosen, loads in bootsect.dos, the oritinal boot sector image.

A triple boot is still possible. Install MSDOS first, then Windows 98/ME, then XP.

However when setting up a new set of hard drives, the partition utilities you get from the boot media (Windows 98/ME recovery disk, or XP's cd-rom) are limited and sometimes create conflicts.

I recommend "ultimate boot" (do a websearch), which is free and contains all sorts of system setup and diagnostic utilities, including partition creation and managment.