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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2001 9:47 am Post subject:

I have the following setup:

20gb hard drive, split into 3 partitions:

1 (7gb) win2k - fat32
2 (8.5gb) linux
3 (rest) share - fat32

I copied the linux boot sector and have the win2k boot sector as the main one, with the option to boot linux fom there. All works fine.

However, being a bit of a gamer - aren't we all Smile

- I want my win98 install back and am interested in putting it on the 3rd partition. Is this possible? If so how can i do it without buggering up the boot sequence.

Is it true that whatever is installed last overwrites all other boot options. How can I avoid this?

Thanks

T

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2001 5:31 pm Post subject:

Quote:

...Is it true that whatever is installed last overwrites all other boot options...

T

I believe that is true, thats why i like to install linux last...

I wouldn't be sure how to set it so you don't touch the boot, if you're gonna try it tho i suggest Backing up first Very Happy

I suppose you could format the boot sector now, copy win98 on the third partition, get back into linux with a bootdisk and setup lilo - that should i think... But maybe you should wait until you get some input from squito - his an expert at linux Very Happy

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2001 6:34 pm Post subject:

From what I understand without using a 3rd party boot manager Windows98/95 will NOT boot from anywhere but the first partition of the primary master harddrive, but you might be able to fool it if you set your BIOS to boot from say the D drive and put a second drive in your system. As for overwriting the boot sector it shouldn't be a problem. If windows98 puts its boot files on the C drive(Win2K partition) it still won't overwrite "ntldr" and "boot.ini" files. I suspect that it will still boot to the NT boot menu. If you do install it to a 2nd drive and the Win98 boot files get installed to C then you might be able to modify the "boot.ini" file and create an entry manually to point to the Win98 install on D and you might have to copy the Win98 boot files to D to make it work. All this is of untested so you'll be a good guniea pig. Good luck and let us know how it goes. Oh by the way if you totally screw up Win2K booting and the "ntldr" and "boot.ini" files are still present just boot from the Win2K CD and choose the "Console Repair" option, then type help and you should see the "FixMBR" and "FixBoot" commands that should fix you right back to where you started.

Rover

Toilet bowls...the chalice of dogs everywhere.

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2001 9:17 pm Post subject:

Quote:

...Oh by the way if you totally screw up Win2K booting and the "ntldr" and "boot.ini" files are still present just boot from the Win2K CD and choose the "Console Repair" option, then type help and you should see the "FixMBR" and "FixBoot" commands that should fix you right back to where you started...

Rover

Toilet bowls...the chalice of dogs everywhere.

Now thats cool, i dind't know that, sounds usefull though.

Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2001 1:16 am Post subject:

Thanks for the responses. I am away from home until the weekend, so will try this out then.

I have just purchased another hdd and I think I'm gonna put win 98 on that, and leave my 3rd partition on hdd1 as a share.

T

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2001 4:38 pm Post subject:

I discovered something at work while setting up a dual boot with Win98 and Win2K. It appears that Win2K makes a .bin file of the MBR when it installs. See when you install Win2K on a system with Win9x already in existence it over writes the MBR, dumbs Win2K boot files to the root of C and now I think makes either a backup of the MBR or copies it for use. Anyways the file was called dosboot.bin or bootsector.bin or something like that. I forgot to look at the boot.ini file to see if it referenced that in anyways like you would see for Linux.bin but I blew the whole thing away today.

Rover

Toilet bowls...the chalice of dogs everywhere.

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2001 9:30 am Post subject:

Her's where I'm at:

I have added a second hdd to my existing win2k/linux dual boot, no problems there.

I have connected the new hdd as slave to HDD1 on the same EIDE channel.

I can now boot into windows 2k or linux with no problems at all, using that hdd as primary boot in the bios, and can see the win98 hdd.

But I cannot think of a way to get hdd2 to be part of the win2k boot sequence. I have tried making some changes to the win2k boot.ini, but to no avail!

By changing which drive I boot from first in the bios I can get win98 to boot up, but it hangs when I try to open windows explorer or whenever I ask it to do anything that involves it accessing the other hdd in any way.

Anyone with any more ideas on how I can rectify this?

Cheers

T

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

Her's where I'm at:

I have added a second hdd to my existing win2k/linux dual boot, no problems there.

I have connected the new hdd as slave to HDD1 on the same EIDE channel.

I can now boot into windows 2k or linux with no problems at all, using that hdd as primary boot in the bios, and can see the win98 hdd.

But I cannot think of a way to get hdd2 to be part of the win2k boot sequence. I have tried making some changes to the win2k boot.ini, but to no avail!

By changing which drive I boot from first in the bios I can get win98 to boot up, but it hangs when I try to open windows explorer or whenever I ask it to do anything that involves it accessing the other hdd in any way.

Anyone with any more ideas on how I can rectify this?

Cheers

T

go into win2k and take a screen capture of your drive layout under the management console for managing hard disks

then make me a copy of the contents of your boot.ini file
I'll take a look at it and see what I can do for ya

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2001 3:16 am Post subject:

Thanks brain,

will do it on wednesday morning when I'm back at home.

T

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

Thanks brain,

will do it on wednesday morning when I'm back at home.

T

np . . . I probably won't have a chance to check it out till i return to Casa Del Brain this weekend

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2001 11:34 am Post subject:

Brain,

I've emailed you the stuff you wanted.

T

ps thats the first time i've seen the disk management console - pretty wicked!

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2001 12:30 am Post subject:

Brain,

I lost control last night, got fed up with Win2k and now have this situation:

My problems in order are:

1. I have windows 98 installed on a seperate HDD, set as slave to the master (in 2). (No problems here, just for your information and so 3. makes sense!)

2. I am trying to install Linux Red Hat 7.0.

I get to the stage right at the end of the install process where the installer should start loading the packages. On that screen, but just before it loads them, it puts up a little window that says:

"Formatting/filesystem..."

I have left it now for about 20 minutes and nothing seems to be happening! I am doing a custom install and everything up until now seems to have gone okay. The hdd I am installing it onto is okay, and I set up the partitions using the Fips like so:

/boot 24mb
/ 19000mb
/swp 500mb

Any ideas on why it is hanging at this stage?

The hdd led and cd-rom led just remain on!

3. I have since tried to do a workstation install and everything installed okay, but not to my custom settings.
Now, when I boot up, my LILO recognises I have a linux and dos option to boot into, Linux boots fine, but when I choose the dos option (my win98 on hdd1 - this WAS recognised during the Linux install) I get a blank black screen with this in the top left corner:

Loading dos
L?

What does this mean? How can I rectify this so LILO boots windows?

Many thanks in advance

T

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

Brain,

I lost control last night, got fed up with Win2k and now have this situation:

My problems in order are:

1. I have windows 98 installed on a seperate HDD, set as slave to the master (in 2). (No problems here, just for your information and so 3. makes sense!)

2. I am trying to install Linux Red Hat 7.0.

I get to the stage right at the end of the install process where the installer should start loading the packages. On that screen, but just before it loads them, it puts up a little window that says:

"Formatting/filesystem..."

I have left it now for about 20 minutes and nothing seems to be happening! I am doing a custom install and everything up until now seems to have gone okay. The hdd I am installing it onto is okay, and I set up the partitions using the Fips like so:

/boot 24mb
/ 19000mb
/swp 500mb

Any ideas on why it is hanging at this stage?

The hdd led and cd-rom led just remain on!

3. I have since tried to do a workstation install and everything installed okay, but not to my custom settings.
Now, when I boot up, my LILO recognises I have a linux and dos option to boot into, Linux boots fine, but when I choose the dos option (my win98 on hdd1 - this WAS recognised during the Linux install) I get a blank black screen with this in the top left corner:

Loading dos
L?

What does this mean? How can I rectify this so LILO boots windows?

sorry sir,

please refer all linux questions to rover (out of my league there) *L*

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2001 4:22 am Post subject:

Cracked it, but was unable to do the custom install, had to go for the custom install instead!!

got my box back up n running now, with red hat7.0 on the primary hdd and win98 on the primary slave hdd.

i'm booting through lilo, with the choice of linux or win98...... cookin' on gas!

thanks for all the help

T

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

thanks for all the help

NP sir !

sorry i wasn't around to be of more help