My computer has two hard drives, C with Win XP fully installed and D with Win 98 fully installed (each drive came from different working computers. Each drive was separately adapted to be used on this computer. At the moment the C drive with XP works fine, but I can get the recently introduced D drive to work with Win 98 only by removing the power or the data cable from the C drive. How can I get them to work both (one at a time of course) from the XP start menu?

G'day Sarian, the thing you should do is to reinstall 98 over itself if you can as this will rewrite the necessary bootup files to detect 98 [io.sys, netdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini and maybe a few others as well] although you may also have reinstall XP as well after 98. At the moment it seems that 98's registry is still pointing towards it's original drive letter, presumably C: from it's old machine and the bootup files have no idea that 98 exists. Another way, if it suits your needs, is to swap the drives around so 98 is C: and reinstall XP over itself [this is how my set up is]. Or you could, if you have the time and patience, wipe everything and resetup in order [98 as C:, XP as D:] which may be the better option.

Likely all you need to do is to edit the XP boot.ini - XP has its own boot manager, and will allow you to select the OS from a boot menu. A bit beyond my direct experience (or this forum's focus) If you get people asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers

I don't beleive editing that file will do anything. With my current setup I backup each drive's OS onto a CDRW disc and if anything goes wrong with one system I can replace it all from the other system as long as the bootup files stay where they are in C: [another file is bootsect.dos]. This works out well for me as long as the two OS's are 'in conjunction' [for want of a better term] with each other. However, I once wiped off both systems and reinstalled 98 and simply copied back XP, including the bootup files, from the CDRW disc and only 98 worked. It seemed that there might be a time-stamp issue or something else, possably in the registry, that prevented a normal dual boot choice. The boot.ini did not work and there was no choices at POST as it just booted straight to 98. This is why I recommend a complete reinstall but if someone else has a better view on it I'm all ears. I prefer 98 for most things and XP for the things 98 can't do. I still believe 95 is faster than both but is very limited now, won't install on this more modern machine at all but I still use that as my workhorse on another antiquated machine.

I have XP on C drive and 98SE on D drive and this is my XP boot.ini file. [Boot Loader] timeout=30 Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [Operating Systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"

Hello everyone, As Ronnie Ratt stated earlier, editing or creating a boot.ini file is not going to do the trick. The Win98 registry is going to reference the C: drive as will the WinXp registry. My personal preference would be to reinstall both operating systems with Win98 on C: and WinXp on D:. There's another option that will work if the WinXp file system is FAT32. You would leave WinXp as the C: drive. Reinstall Win98 on D: Create a BOOTSECT.DOS file. Run the Repair option from the WinXp disk to perform a FIXBOOT. For creating the BOOTSECT.DOS file and how to perform the FIXBOOT, see this link. Best Regards, Mesich

To determain just what needs to be done, will need more info. 1) is XP on a FAT32 or NTFS file system ? 2) was win98 originaly drive C: or D:? You may have to use a third party boot manager depending on answers. You should be able to get it to work with out a reinstall of OS's.