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How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98

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Original Message
Name: Sohail
Date: August 22, 1999 at 13:42:59 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Comment:

I have been trying to dual boot my home machine which is crrently running Win 98 and the Hard Disk is formatted as Fat 32. I have made a 1.6gb partition on which I am trying to install WIN NT. I have made the small partition active and loaded the NT files from the CD ROM but when I restart NT there is nothing just a blinking cursor... I have tried everything that I can think of from installing an OS/2 boot manager to installing partition magic boot manager. but nothing seems to work... Some one please HELPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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Response Number 1
Name: Edi
Date: August 22, 1999 at 14:38:43 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Reply: (edit)

The Problem is that Win NT doesn't support
FAT 32. You have to reformat your Hard Disk
with FAT 16. But likly you have more than 2 Gb HD and so you have to format a primary boot-partition with FAT 16. The other ones can't be formated with a different file system!


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Response Number 2
Name: Edi
Date: August 22, 1999 at 14:42:09 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Reply: (edit)

Sorry I've made a typing errror.
The other ones -> can <- be formated with a
different file system!


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Response Number 3
Name: graeme
Date: August 23, 1999 at 00:09:15 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Reply: (edit)

Just to expand a little on what has been said. The reason you can't install is that NT needs to write boot files to the boot partition, your C drive. Because NT doesn't support FAT32, the boot partition also needs to be FAT16 or NTFS.

However Windows 2000 (NT5) will install with a fat32 boot partition.

If you do decide to reload, make sure you do windows 98 first, on a different partition. (it is easier to install 98 then NT, than the other way around!)

Cheers


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Response Number 4
Name: Mike
Date: September 16, 1999 at 10:55:55 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Reply: (edit)

You can do it despite what these guys are saying. Here's a quoted article that I used and it worked perfectly with NTFS primary partition on drive1 and FAT32 as the second.
Add Windows 98 to Your NT System

by Scott Spanbauer
July 1999

The February Windows NT column lists the pros and cons of four different dual-boot scenarios, including one in which Windows 98 is installed on a FAT32 partition and Windows NT is set up on an NTFS partition. But everything I have read says you can't dual-boot NTFS and FAT32 without a third-party boot manager.

Frank Goffena, Celina, Ohio

Rest assured that you can have both NTFS and FAT32 file systems on one PC. Ordinarily, the trick to dual-booting Windows NT and 98 is to install Windows 98 first, then NT. During installation, NT replaces Windows 98's bootstrap files with its own multiboot operating system loader, NTLDR, and creates entries for Windows 98 and NT on the multiboot menu. However, Windows NT will not boot (or install) if drive C: is a FAT32 partition. And if your system came with NT preinstalled, Windows 98's install program won't run in Windows NT.

This is where third-party boot managers can come in handy. But why pay good money for such a utility when NTLDR is a perfectly fine alternative and is free? With the aid of Windows 98's Fdisk disk-partitioning tool and the free Boot Partition 2.20 utility (available on FileWorld), you can easily install Windows 98 to a FAT32 partition, then add it to the Windows NT boot menu. Assuming that you have sufficient free drive space to create a FAT32 partition, here's how to dual-boot NTFS and FAT32:

PREPARE A FAT32 PARTITION. Boot the system with a Windows 98 start-up disk. Next, enter fdisk at the A: prompt. When Fdisk asks whether you want to enable large disk support, type Y. The utility will then ask you if you want to treat the existing NTFS partition as a large volume. It doesn't matter what your answer is, since we're not going to touch the NTFS partition. I typed Y. Next, press 1, then 1 again to create a primary DOS partition--a logical drive in an extended partition. Answer the remaining prompts to finish creating the partition, then reboot the system with the Windows 98 start-up disk. Next, format the new partition using the command format c:. (Don't worry--your NTFS partition is safe and sound, invisible to Windows 98.)
INSTALL WINDOWS 98 ON DRIVE C:. Remove the Windows 98 start-up disk, insert the Windows 98 installation CD-ROM, go to the CD-ROM drive, and run setup.exe. If the Windows 98 start-up floppy's generic CD-ROM drivers do not work with your drive, consult your system or drive manufacturer's instructions to add the necessary drivers to the floppy's config.sys and autoexec.bat files.
MAKE NT BOOTABLE. Once Windows 98 is installed, reboot your computer with the Windows 98 floppy, launch Fdisk, and press 2, then 1 to make the NTFS drive the active (bootable) partition. Next, answer the remaining prompts, remove the Windows 98 boot floppy, and then reboot. The computer should now boot to Windows NT.
ADD WINDOWS 98 TO NT'S BOOT MENU. Download and unzip Boot Partition 2.20, then copy bootpart.exe to your root directory (C:\). Select Start, Run and type command to open a Windows NT command prompt window, and then enter the command c:\bootpart to display a list of boot sectors that are available on the system. Lastly, type bootpart 1 boot98.bin Windows 98. Enter exit to return to NT.
The next time you start Windows NT, you'll see Windows 98 at the bottom of the multiboot menu. You can use Boot Partition to add other operating systems (including Linux or BeOS) to NT's multiboot menu as well. However, Boot Partition author Giles Vollant says the tool can't add OS/2 to the boot menu.



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Response Number 5
Name: Venkat
Date: December 8, 2000 at 07:26:43 Pacific
Subject: How to Dual Boot WIN NT with WIN 98
Reply: (edit)

I have 20GB Hard disk. I want dual booting in that one 98 and one Windows NT. How it will be possible, please help me.


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