I'm trying to make a dual boot system with win 2k and 98. There are 2 drives in my system On 1 is win 98 installed on the other 2K. During the installation I removed the win98 disk because there is some important information on it. Now I can't dual boot because at the system proporties/start up recovery there is only one system. How can I get the win 98 system also in the list of operating systems?

if i understand what you are saying you have two hardrives each with a different o.s.
i have just istalled win98 and win2000 as a dual boot system both o.s. have to be on the same hardrive
i just installed 2000 and am no expert but i think this is how to do it

hth

You will have to edit your boot.ini file and have the Win2k drive be the first to boot. Editing the boot.ini file will allow you to have a menu on startup, where you can choose to boot to the Win98 partition. Search on www.microsoft.com - knowledgebase for boot and ARC path.

Sample:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Beta" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Try to install boot magic 6.0!
It will help you to manage hard drive space!
It's cool

bye
culla69

Basics:

In a dual/multi-boot set up the installed M$ OS's install their boot/start-up files into the active Primary/system partition. The system files (the actual OS) go wherever you point them - even to another physical HD.

You removed the '98-HD and installed W2K on its own HD. When you re-install the '98 HD as Master or Slave you can only boot to/from whichever HD is Master? This is because the active Primary/system partition on whichever HD is Master has no boot/start-up files for the 'other' OS.

Your solutions:

1)
Install a third-party/add-in boot-manager (PM6x - can handle W2K - or one of the freebies out there...). You can then use this to select which Primary (and thus which OS) to boot to/from.

Using an add-in boot-manager will allow you use/see one Primary partition only; the inactive/unused Primary is hidden. In this scenario, to share data between the two Primaries (OS's) means you need an Extended partition on one of the HD's; Extended partitions are visible to whichever Primary is active. The Extended data area also needs to be a common file format; for W2K/'98 this can be FAT32 (even FAT16...).

2)
Connect the W2K-HD as Slave to the 98-HD; re-install W2K to its HD - in effect run set-up from a CD boot (or the 4 floppies), choose Repair and it will write a set of W2K boot/start-up files to the '98 system (active Primary) partition - thus establishing the basic dual/multi-boot requirement. W2K will add '98 to the W2K boot-menu and give you the dual-boot option. (Do not run the set-up/Repair routine from within an installed OS.)

Caveat: if the '98 HD is 'noticeably' slower than the new W2K-HD then you will not benefit from the W2K-HD superior performance/speed of access... The maximum speed of access to both HD's is determined by the speed of the Master HD...

Equally you could install '98 as Slave to W2K-HD (Master) and re-install '98 (in effect an overwrite...) and thus establish its boot/start-up files into the W2K system partition. Again you fulfill the basic requirement for a dual/multi-boot. This order of HD's means that if W2K-HD is 'faster' then it will still be able to perform to its best, with the '98-HD as its slave.

As you are understandably concerned about your '98 HD (its data) I'm inclined to favour any 'minor' sacrifice of performance of W2K-HD in order to retain '98-HD as Master to W2K-HD Slave (although setting '98-HD as Slave to W2K-HD Master should be OK...). Adding the W2K boot-files to the '98 system partition will/should 'not' affect the performance/reliability etc. of the '98 installation.

Otherwise maybe the boot-manager add-in util is the way to go?

http://www.xosl.org;

http://www.osloader.com

are both freebie boot-loader sources.

Suppose one had installed W2K Pro onto the second drive standalone, into the D: partition of drive #2, loading W2K boot files into C: of drive #2

After reconnecting drive #1 with a factory OEM Win98 installation in C: of drive #1, with perhaps a D: partition on drive #1 also, where drive #1 is the primary and drive #2 as slave, the W2K drive letters would then shift to at least D: and F: Note with factory OEM Win98 one could only re-image the drive #1, but not re-install.

Will Boot Magic take care of the shifted letters for the W2K installation? Later on,
if one wanted to make the faster W2K drive #2 the primary and the other drive #1 slave (reformatted for other purposes, perhaps Linux or XP Pro), would one use Boot Magic to handle the letters being shifted again? and W2K startup up from drive #2 (now primary drive) with drive letters C: and E: