I've got two internal physical HD. The big one is about 100 gig and the smaller is about 60 gig. The small I had first and ran Win 98 SE on it. I got the big late last year and installed Xp on it. The small was c: and the big d:. When I'd turn on my machine I'd get a choice betwen XP or 98. I work almost exclusivley off of XP, in fact the only reason I used 98 was becasue my scanner and a couple other devices weren't compatable with XP. I mainly used the small drive as a backup for my music, pictures, and important files which now add up to about 50 gig.

For the last month my computer has been running horribly. I assumed it was because of ad ware and spy ware I don't have the savvy to remove. So I decided to format and reinstall my OS's and programs, without losing my files.

I backed up everything to the smaller drive and ran the XP cd from within XP doing a clean reinstall which included a format and copied all my files back from the small with no problem at all. Later I wanted to do the same with 98. I downloaded a boot disc with CD rom support.

I wanted to make sure the didn't undo everything I'd already done to the big by accident so I disconnected the cable to it. I then ran fdisk on the small and formated it from the boot disk I downloaded. I instlled 98 on it from a cd.

Then the problem began. When I start my computer it went directly to 98 without giving me a choice. I went into Bios and changed the hard disc boot order so the big was first on the list followed by the small. When I tried to reboot I just got one line saying "No operating system found". I changed the order back and was able to boot directly into 98. 98 couldn't see all my big drive which was in NTFS. I installed XP over 98 so I could see my d: and backup the files to the small drive which now had XP as well. I poked around the big drive and saw the Windows folder was still there.

Now when I boot the computer it goes into XP on the small drive. I want to have a choice between which drive's XP it boots to so I can then run XP off my big and revert the small back to 98 so I can use it primarily for backup and using my scanner and a few other items with 98.

This might be able to get fixed but since it's just been reinstalled you don't have anything to lose by just trying again which would probably be faster than trying to fix it the way it is... Why don't you just copy the files you need back onto the small drive where you had them backed up in the first place, reinstall XP to the big drive, copy the files back, install 98 on the small one?

Bill Gates has performed 1024 illegal operations.

I hope he's sorry for the inconvenience.

I thought about doing that, in fact, I've already backed up the files to the small drive, but the XP I have needs to run from a Win OS like 98. So I'd have to install 98 on the big drive then upgrade to XP. I was hoping to avoid this since I know XP is on there; it just won't boot. Another problem that may complicate this is that when I use the boot floppy I can't see to find the big drive. I can type a:, c:, e:, f: and access their dir, but when I type d: at the command promt I don't see the files I know should be there. The files include command and format amounst other files that make me think it's some temp install drive set up by the floppy. But I don't know enough to say for sure. I've tried typing in q:, n:, g: just trying to see if by big drive I think should show up under d: was assigned another drive letter.

Could Norton Ghost be of aid here? I have it with my Norton but I've never used it.

Strange how we as human being decide on a course of action without checking...

You could have easily fixed your first problem of no XP after the 98 install if you had done a google search on the subject. You are not alone and this is a common issue.

When you formatted and reinstalled you wiped out the XP boot files and the master boot record that has been altered to go to XP.

The easy fix is boot the XP cd and go into recovery console. Run the utility fixmbr and then fixboot. This would have corrected the missing files and altered the mbr for XP to use.

So you have two choices:
1. edit the present boot.ini file on c: to include the entry for the 2nd install of XP on the big drive if you want to boot to it.
2. format and reinstall 98 and then use recovery console to restore the XP boot.

Best of luck!

I'd like to go with option 1.

I've opened the boot.ini file. It says this:

[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

What do I need to change?

[boot loader]
timeout=15
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
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Just happen to be testing SP2 out on a second install of WindowsXP. My boot.ini above. You can change which drive is default
in the boot.ini section of Msconfig.