After re-reading the link in trvlr's W2k post 32141 and the gyrations I went through for W2k post 28743, I thought I had multi booting down pat. NOT!
I have an old P233 Pro with NT4 (SP6a and the post SP6a SRP Q299444 [and not the "sort of" SP7 Q305925]) running on a slow C:\ HDD (3600 rpm). I replaced the HDD(5400 rpm) and put down W2k (FAT32 C:\ primary partition) then Win98 (FAT32 D:\ logical drive in the extended partition). Did the first part of the W2k install to get the W2k MBR back and make the needed BOOTSECT.DOS file to dual boot Win98.
Everything worked great, boots both OSs, no problems.
Finding I needed some info off of the NT4 drive (FAT); I slapped that HDD back into the PC (as a slave), edited the BOOT.INI file (on the W2k FAT32 primary partition) to point to rdisk(1) in order to boot NT 4, then booted into NT4 (booted as a C:\ drive like it was originally).
Ya, I know, NT4 can't read FAT32 drives. Indeed, I can't access the FAT32 drives via Explorer from NT4, though the drive letters (E:\ & F:\) do show up (NT4 considers them RAW drives).
It looks like the file system mini driver built into the W2k NTLDR file (that can read FAT32) can successfully pass control to the NT4 ntoskrnl.exe file. And the ntoskrnl doesn't care that it can't read the "system drive". That machine is running SETI as I write, no problem.
There are a couple of caveats that may or may not pertain: NT4 and W2k were installed on primary partitions on seperate HDDs, with only one HDD (master) in the machine (that's how you get them both booting into a C:\ drive). I do have the W2k NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM files and a BOOT.INI file on both HDDs, but I don't think the NT4 drive's boot files were used. I know that the NT4 boot.ini file wasn't used, it doesn't use the /sos switch. I don't think Win98 will boot in this configuration because of the way Microsoft does drive lettering (primary partitions on all HDDs first). Win98 would read the W2k FAT32 primary as C:\, the NT4 FAT primary as D:\, making the Win98 drive E:\ instead of D:\ (as Win98 was originally installed on the D:\ drive). Hmm, I wonder if Win98 would boot if the NT4 drive was on a NTFS primary, or would I just end up with a MSDOS compatible drive the would still be listed as a D:\ drive.
HTH someone,
michael
