You can install out of order. If you look at ms knowledge base article 217210 it states what MS believes to be the correct install order. In reality the install order should be msdos.sys based OS's then ntldr based OS's. For example you can install XP then NT and W2K which is out of order. All you have to remember is to copy off ntldr and ntdetect.com before they are overwritten by the NT and W2K installs. To fix just copy back and overwrite the NT/W2K versions. You will be able to boot XP again in addition to NT and W2K. Now if you install 98 and 98 is on d: being msdos.sys based it is going to overwrite the mbr which was pointing to XP boot files on c: in the case of this post. It is also going to place msdos.sys and io.sys plus command.com on c:. For more on how msdos based OS enumerate drives look at KB 51978. Next boot will only boot 98. This is where fixboot comes in. It modifies the mbr back to looking for the XP boot files. Add the c:\="windows 98" and its a done deal. I have always fdisked/formated and then installed so I have always has a bootsect.dos file. I am not sure of if you did a cd install to a raw disk. I would imagine then that you would be correct. Hence my recommendation of reinstalling 98 on d: so the bootsect.dos issue is moot. Concerning your statement about XP always thinking it is on c: no matter what I don't believe this to be true. Your statement "All NT type OS's do their drive lettering from the registry. " is absolutly false. I don't see XP being different in this regard. Drive letter enumeration in NT3.5, 4.0, W2kpro and server have always had this issue. A simple check of a registry, for examply my multiboot test server at work [which doesn't have xP] shows my documents and settings in server to be i:\ in the registry [multiple drives in the system]. Now what is true is that ntldr based OS's when you change drive letters via Disk Management do keep a database of drive letter assignments which it loads when you boot that system. You will note though that if you boot up on a 98 boot disk and view the assignment with fdisk you will see those ntldr based OS assignments are not the way fdisk sees them. So except for the bootsect.dos issue the procedure I recommended will work. One of the reasons for the recommendation of doing 98 is most users find 98 easier to install then XP.

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wanderer, My apologies, I found your 2nd paragraph really confusing (even on the third/fourth reread). I read repair to mean Recovery Console stuff and not install or reinstall. You're right that an install will make the bootsect.dos, but I don't know if any of the repair procedures will MAKE a bootsect.dos file (including the Recovery Console bootcfg command). They didn't in NT or W2k, trvlr and I have been down that path. Haven't played with boocfg to really test it out and see what it does do - never had need to. I also just accepted that Steve has two HDDs with Win98 and XP already installed and working. No need for a lot of steps to get a dual boot going in that case. trvlr's method is tried and true - and admittedly probably easier for those people having the full install CD. I just find the debug method of making a bootsect.dos file so much quicker and easier. A quick copying of two files (three if you include the boot.ini), a file make/edit and a quick fixboot in the Recovery Console - Bob's your uncle - a dual boot setup. The fixmbr being unneeded as the MBR just looks for the active primary partition to pass the boot process onto.

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Either Upgrade or full version CD should work?

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...and I'm orf to bed; it's getting late here...

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Trblr, >Run XP set-up to c:\temp\winnt; abort at first reboot Clever...I hadn't heard of that one before. Dave BTW, my XP is on E:, so no...It doesn't always call itself C:

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??Trblr?? Oops...I meant Trvlr. Damn keyboard types what IT wants to, not what I WANT it to. :) Dave

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Warning, this is going to be a looooong one! trvlr, Just meant that the Recovery CD's that people get with their OEM systems won't work like this. Dave, But did you install XP as a C: drive? wanderer, Looks like we were posting at the same time. I had started answering you back, but thought to actually retest some things on my main system. Numbered these to help me keep things clear in my own mind. 1. Not to be picky, but as I posted, the MBR has nothing to do with whether NTLDR or IO/MSDOS.SYS is looked for during the boot process. That is the boot sector code that does it. Have a read of: http://home.att.net/~rayknights/pc_boot/w2k_mbr.htm regarding the W2k MBR. Read: http://home.att.net/~rayknights/pc_boot/w98bboot.htm#Disassembly regarding the Win98 boot sector. 2. You got me on the "Drive letter enumeration in NT3.5, 4.0, W2kpro and server have always had this issue" - but what issue?. You're right, I don't know about NT3.5 (or 3.51), not having used them. But for an ALREADY installed on C: NT4.0, W2k, XP, .NET - my statement stands, examples follow. Can we agree that we are both talking about having one OS on one primary partition, like Steve posted about? Like you, I multiboot multiple OSs on multiple drives - that example and discussion is last. The, now, 2nd HDD in one of my systems had XP installed when that HDD was the only drive in the system. No matter how many drives or HDD's I have, that XP install ALWAYS boots to a C: (in that PC). On another system with a C:\ NT4 (D:\ is NTFS) drive, I added a drive (as master IDE0 - moving the NT4 drive to slave IDE0). Put on C:\ W2k Pro - active primary partition (FAT32) and D:\ Win98 - 1st logical partition in the extended partition (FAT32). Right now NT4 is booted on it, as a C: drive. W2k of course boots as C:. The FAT32 drives come up as E: and F: under NT4 SP6a. Yes, in order to get Win98 to boot on that system, I need to disconnect the NT4 drive - because of the drive letter enumeration that you stated. 3. Maybe our interpretations of Q234048 - How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters - differs. From your post: "" Your statement "All NT type OS's do their drive lettering from the registry. " is absolutly false. "" isn't false at all, for a single instance of an ALREADY installed NT type OS. During a new install process for NT type OSs, YES, the MS-DOS drive lettering enumeration will come into play. Once placed in the registry though, the existing drive letters are fixed. New drives added will use the next available letters. Near the end of that paragraph you dragged the Win98 drive lettering enumeration into things. Why? Of course Win98 will see the drives differently, that was not in any way the issue (I did clearly state "NT Type OSs"). And I was specifically talking about XP, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. BTW, I ran into the drive lettering difference between Win9x and NT type OSs trying to setup the last example system. Took me forever to get all the drive letters the same as Win98 reported. MS-DOS compatible drives under Win98 really buggered things up. 5. I concur, that your way would work (providing that XP disk wasn't NTFS). I apology. I should know better. I shouldn't have started my 1st post off that way, nor paint with such a broad brush. 6. This is why we need to agree on one OS for one HDD here. For those not interested, you can skip the rest. This deals with the multi OS on multi drive issue. I took the time to possibly blow up one of my test systems before answering. I think I only lost my NT4 test server. No permenant damage to my NT4 Wks, didn't try booting Win98 - it wouldn't have worked anyway. My disk setup IDE0 master HDD 10GB 1st primary FAT - C: Win98 - main boot drive 2nd primary NTFS - O: ADVw2k Server Extended partition 1st logical - FAT - F: NT4 Wks SP6a 2nd logical - FAT32 3rd logical - FAT - H: 4th logical - NTFS - M: IDE0 slave HDD 10GB 1st primary - FAT32 - D: W2k Pro SP3 2nd primary - NTFS - P: W2k Server SP2 IDE1 master HDD 8GB 1st primary - FAT - E: Extended 1st logical - NTFS - N: NT4 Server SP6a then FAT32, FAT, FAT 5th logical - NTFS - Q: IDE1 slave CD - X: I rearranged the drives so that IDE0 slave was master, IDE0 master was IDE1 master, making the IDE1 master the IDE0 slave. - W2k booted just fine, except for being unable to ID a drive E: (I didn't want to reboot after W2k rediscovered the drives). Still came up as D: like normal. My drive lettering remained as above, except for the missing drives off of the new IDE0 slave. All the extend partition's drives were missing. - NT4 Server - gave an Inaccessable Boot Device error in the resulting BSOD. Haven't used it in a long time, so that install may been cakked already. - W2k Server, no problem with any of the drives, came up as it normally does, on the P: drive. All drives their regular drive letters. - W2k ADV Server, no problem with any of the drives, came up as it normally does, on the O: drive. All drives their regular drive letters. - NT4 Workstation was a whole other kettle of fish. It correctly didn't know about drive C: as it is a FAT32 drive (W2k Pro, IDE0 master 1st primary partition). Yes, you can boot NT4 from a FAT32 drive (see NT post 18519) with either the W2k boot files or the XP/.NET ones. I think that the IDE0 slave drive went missing in this boot, creating my NT4 problems with this senario. The D: drive was then the Win98 drive - that's the 1st primary partition of the IDE1 master. Supports the missing IDE0 slave drive theory. My original H: FAT drive was changed to G:. My F: NTwks was changed to E:, created pagefile, office and explorer problems on boot up, amoungst other problems. The new F: drive was unknown, most likely one of my other FAT32 drives. The NTFS drives remained the same drive letters that they were originally. That missing IDE0 slave drive was a copy of my original 5GB C: drive. Its MBR is still from DOS 6.22, don't know if that was the cause or if it was something else. Seemed fine in W2k though. The CD drive remained the X: drive in all instances.

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Whew so much to read! And such narrow column to do it in. A quick skim and I think we are all on the same track. I have been working with NT since 3.50 [no old comments now :-)] and doing multiboots with 4.0 since '99. I have gotten very intimate concerning the drive letter enumeration in both msdos.sys and ntldr based OS. Sorry to come on too strong about the "false" statement. I am in the middle of wan redesign to intergrate a phone system to 8 sites and a lot is going on with end of the year stuff. I wrote a doc on how to move OS's around a while back which detail how to export the registry to a txt file and use word to do a search and replace. This has worked for both Msdos based and NT. I have not had time to test in W2K or XP. I don't do that much "in the trenches" anymore but still work with three systems in a number of multiboot configurations at home. I have seen in W2K that MS is using %systemroot% for the os more but as I pointed out the documents and settings in my w2k registry has the drive letter i: associated with it. Drive enumeration is still important to MS products. I will have to take a read concerning the MBR links you provide. It has always been my understanding that the MBR, amoung many things, contains the boot code. It is this very boot code that all MS OS's alter to look for themselves. Like in the case of ntldr OS modifing so it looks for its loader files not 98. But its late here and I have a very umpleasent meeting to go to tomorrow. Nothing like telling the CEO and CFO that half our wksts will no longer be supported by NAV as of end of next year [we still run 95] and either we look at TS or $125K in replacements. Have a good one!

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Michael, I missed the part about "if installed on a C: drive, will always boot up as the C: drive." No, mine was installed as E: originally. Dave

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Thanks Dave. wanderer, I've a few years on you in NT4 and multi booting, guess we're both a couple of old goats. You brought up an interesting point about the %systemroot%. This lead me to think of the way MS designates the boot drive vs. the system drive. My #6 bothered me, so I found what was wrong with that drive. Turns out I had strapped it for 2GB instead of as a slave drive. Go figure! Anyways, I repeated the exercise. Bottom line was that all my OS drive letters remained the same when I booted that NT type OS. F:NT4 Wks, D: W2k Pro, P: W2k Server and N: NT4 Server - already covered XP working the same on that other machine. The extended partition drive letters remained consistent with the original ordering of the HDDs. What did change the lettering of the primary partitions (PP). They looked like this: NT4 Wks C: PP of Dsk0 - W2k D: PP of Dsk1 - EonD E: PP of Dsk2 - CDOS NT4 Server, W2k Pro, W2k Server C: PP of Dsk2 - CDOS D: PP of Dsk0 - W2k E: PP of Dsk1 - EonD No sure why NT Wks had a different drive lettering for them. Must be the way in which Wks recognizes the system drive (the one with the NTLDR etal files). Because of that drive previously missing, it did screw up my drive lettering in the various OSs. Again, it took a bit to get everything back to the way it was. And I was right about the MBR and boot sector on that drive . Had to fixmbr and fixboot it from W2k CD Recovery Console (fdisk /mbr from a Win98 boot disk hadn't helped). Funny thing about that, it logged me into the NT4 Server Admin account. Something to keep in mind if you're wanting to fix a hosed NT4 MBR or boot sector, quickly.

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