I have a Pent 3 with 640meg, an ATA 66 controller card & 2 HD. The 80 gig HD is the master, the 20 gig is the slave. I would like to set up a dual boot system, with W2k on the 80 gig & Win98SE on the 20 gig. I have several questions.

First, does W2k have to be set up using FAT32, or is NTFS OK since it won't be sharing the drive with the Win98?

Second, I would like the W2k to be the default OS. Is this likely to cause any problems? How would I ensure that the system recognizes W2k as the default?

Third, I am unsure about how I should go about installing the OS's. Based upon everything I've read, 98 should be installed first, followed by W2k. But everything I've read deals with installing the two OS's on the same HD with partitions. What would -OR- could be done differently with two OS's on two separate HDs?

Right now I have W2k on the master disk, but am planning to do a clean install (reformat, delete everything) to both drives, so working around an existing OS is not exactly a problem.

These are probably stupid questions, but as I said, everything I've read assumes one HD; I can't find much information about two. I've checked the archives here, but haven't found any answers to the questions I've asked.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

~sa

I don't think it's as important with Win 98 to be installed first although it's probably a good idea since Win2K will see it during win2K install and configure boot.ini accordingly. W2k can be installed on the second drive whereas, I think, Win98 needs to be on Drive 0. NTFS will work OK. Win2K programs will be able to see files on the Win 98 drive but Win 98 won't be able to see anything on the NTFS drive.

I am not an expert but I was able to do this successfully after a few initial hickups.

I have taken some notes when I did it. I just give what I have done. Please take whatever is appropriate.

My situation is almost similar to you. I have PIII - 733. HD(PRIMARY) - 20G, HD(SECONDARY) - 40G.

Steps :
a) Installed Windows 98SE on Primary HD (FAT32) . I have 3 partitions on this drive. I did them before doing step b).
b) Clean Install of W2K on Secondary HD
(NTFS) . As Zorkilc mentioned this will mean W2K able to see and access Win98SE files but Wind98Se will not able to see W2K.
c) Though I have read several posts which suggested either of the OS can be installed first , I agree again with Zorkilc that this will ensure W2K seeing it during install.

One major problem I had was with stupid W2K blue screen in the middle of the installation 'HardWare Mal Function' . I took it to my vendor and they confirmed there is no problem with any of my hardware. I was clueless and posted the question in this forum and in various places but never got any useful answer.

After several days of agony, I decided to upgrade my antivirus but it wanted me to uninstall the existing one. I did it and thought of having another go at W2K install. What a merry day it was ! W2K installed successfully. Now I have my version of 'Hardware mal function' error. W2K is trying to write into boot sector of PRIMARY HD during installation but could not do it because antivirus does not allow it. So it came up with 'HardWare Mal Function' as it cannot Primary HD.

As I mentioned earlier, I am not an expert . But If I can do it anyone else can do it. Please post if you have any more questions and post back even if it went ok. This will help novice like me trying to do the same and want to refer somewhere.

Regards,
Susan

There was a post in this forum which was written by some expert , very detail in dual boot w2k and win98se. I am searching for the URL . I will post it if I find it.

Regards,
Susan

format your 20GB drive, install win98.

shutdown

start-up with win2k disc into cd-drive boot from cd.

Install w2k on second hard drive.
shutdown

When you boot windows will ask which os you want to use, after 15 seconds it will take the default os. You can adjust in your boot.ini which drive is default and how much time you want the countdown to be.

You will now have 2 HD with 2 OS

Simple as that, win98 needs fat32 or 16. win2k can do fat 16,32 or ntfs it just depends what you want to do with it. i suggest ntfs.

ooglenz3 has given you standard 98/2k dual boot.

If you want 2k on 80GB drive as master, this works and is simple.

1. Install 2k on 80GB drive
2. Install 98 on 20GB drive (best with 80 GB drive disconnected)
3. Connect both drives (80 master, 20 slave) - which will boot into 2k. Download boot manager from www.boot-us.com (free for personal use). Install in 2k, and run to set up boot menu (you have choices whereto store this). All done.

Filestore types has been mentioned. If you do make 2k ntfs (and I'd recommend this), there's freeware at www.sysinternals.com to allow 98 to read (not write - that costs) ntfs filestore.

I installed many times all kinds of combinations of multiple boots.

The safest way seemed to be:

1)
win95 or win98 on the c: drive (first partition of primary drive). Install this first!

2)
Install as many W2K, w2kpro, w2kadv on any other partition on any drive. no matter if NTFS or FAT32.
This will put some files on the original C: drive, replace the boot block on the primary hard drive with the W2K boot block, which allows multi boot. The file c:\boot.ini will contain the boot menu.

(if you format the c: drive you'll loose your boot, but you can restore it from CD)

3)
install on remaining free partitions Linux if you like. Newer versions (RH9.0) come with "grub" which is also a multi boot boot-loader.
If you allow it to rewrite the MBR it will replace the boot loader on your primary harddrive (c:) with grub and it will automatically provide a choice between W2K and Linux. When you follow the W2K boot you'll get your "old" multi-boot menu from W2K (with the choice of the win98)

Parts of the boot process - also for windows will now go through the linux partition - don't delete it.

This can be changed so that it starts with the W2K boot menu without touching any linux partition. I described it on my web page:

http://home.comcast.net/~peterulbrich/linux/index.htm

This all works with the standard tools without the need to buy any additional software.

http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/21665.html

response #5 may be of interest...

Details it for single/dual-drives etc.