I need your expertize. TIA! :) I have a very odd problem and I'll give you as much information as possible. Here it is... I have a celeron running at 800 mhz with two hd's, I need to triple boot. However, the only way I can boot is by modifying the bios to boot from either ide. One has a hd with win2k on C: and win XP on D:. The other hd has windows 98 and a second partion for storage. I am able to boot from IDE 0, and I get a menu to boot either win2k, winXP or Recovery Console.(No windows 98 option). I am able to boot from IDE 1, and it boots directly into windows 98. (No other option) this is what I have tried: 1. actually right the boot.ini file in win2k and winXP to show the option for win98. This is what happened: - at boot it did show windows 98 option, and when chosen it showed an error: NTFS is not found, make sure the file is located in %system32% and is not corrupt. - hal.dll is missing. 2. Tried to repair win2k and chose to verify the boot record and booting invironment. This is what happened: - NTFS is missing insert a propper bootable device. 3. Re-installed winXP (Which was the last OS I installed obviously)so that it would read the boot sector from win98 and do the proper changes. This is what happend: -NOTHING! everythings was exactly the same. 4. Even modified the boot.ini in windows 98 as it reads for booting options in win2k and winXP only changing the values to point to the other hd. This is what happened: - It didn't even read the boot.ini, it went right into windows 98. *1.Everytime I changed something I tried to boot from IDE 1 (Win98) except the time I changed the boot.ini on win2k and winXP. *2.NTFS might not be the actual letters it shows, but it's something like that. :) This is how the boot.ini looks in Win2k and WinXP: [boot loader] timeout=60 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="MicroSoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons This is how the boot.ini for win98 looks like: [boot loader] timeout=60 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="MicroSoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="MicroSoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect c:\="Microsoft Windows 98SE" Go figure! Unfortunatelly, I am not in the position to re-install any OS. And I installed each OS in the order it came out. 1st. windows98 2nd. windows2k 3rd. WindowsXP why all of this, I crave for knowledge I just need to know how windows perfoms and all the programs the work with each version. Also I have the hobby of beta testing. But I feel so ignorant having to change the bios boot option to run a different OS. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for any help that you may provide. You enlightingness is very much appreciated. Thanks! Trinite

Update!!! The actual message after modifying the boot.ini in win2k/winXP is: NTLDR is missing That's it. Thanks again.

NTLDR has to go in the root drive, along with NTdetect & boot.ini. The boot.ini must be corect. Why don't you use a boot manager? It would be a lot easier, you can set any partition active.

Thanks for the prompt response. I figured that NTLDR has to go in the root drive, the question is which one? I copied it from $system32% in win2k to the root drive of win98 %system%, didn't work. I copied it to %system32% in win98, didn't work. Now, about Ntdetect I never saw any error indication the need for it. Thanks. Still, I'm not sure where to put it in, or which one to use. While they might be the same I found 3 locations in the win2k drive. 1. c:/ 2. c:/winnt/cmdcoms 3. c:/winnt/servicepackfiles/i386 I guess I should just try'em all ah!? boot.ini - I don't know how to edit it anymore but I'll try after relocating everything. I'll try the boot manager, thanks for that idea. any more? Thanx!

go to the root directory, at the dos prompt: type: attrib boot.ini -s -r -h edit boot.ini // after modified and exit edit program attrib boot.ini +s +r +h // exit the dos.