I have win98 on c:\ win XP on d:\ they dual boot fine. I need to reinstall win98 but am afraid of loosing the dual boot menu. what do I need to do before I format c:\ and reinstall win98. thanks

I did not try it my self but you could try take backup of the boot.ini file and put it back after reinstalling

You will indeed lose your boot menu because 98 rewrites the boot sector. In Win2000 you could have used the setup disks. This would have repaired the boot sector. You may heve to reinstall XP over the top of itself. If I were trying to fix it at my level of knowledge I would reserve copies of ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini (just in case) then use my Win2000 setup disks (bootdisk.com) in repair mode and ONLY let them "Inspect Boot Sector". The only thing I'm usure about is whether it will let you into the repair mode without an ERD. This is a workaround. If anyone knows if XP has any tools to fix this problem please post. Inquisitive

Two options you could install win98 again with the parameter 'setup /ir' which will not update the MBR, or you could re-install win 98, then boot from your winXP cd-rom, choose repair. (Just like in Win2k), or WinXP comes with a recoevery console accessible when booting from the cd-rom, when your in there type 'help' to see all of the commands available. One of them says Repair MBR (I cant remember the exact command)

I also have a 98/xp dual boot system and had to reinstall 98 yesterday. The easiest way to recover your boot menu is after installing 98, boot up with XP, select systems in contol panel,sselect the advanced tab and under the start up & recovery option you can select your default boot OS.