Ok. Heres how I believe it works. If you install the recommended way by installing win 98 and then win xp the win 98 partition remains the system boot partition, however it is modified. Instead of the bootsector accessing IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS it goes for NTLDR which is copied into the win98 partition during the XP install, the win98 partition bootsector is modified to point at NTLDR. In order that dos and hence win98 can still be booted, the before image of the modified boot sector is written to the file bootsect.dos. When the dual boot system boots, NTLDR reads boot.ini to display the bootmenu, and depending on the choice goes to either bootsect.dos which accesseses IO.SYS or NTDETECT.COM which does a hardware detect for NT and then it acceses windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe(in the XP partition) the address of which is in boot.ini So if we have 2 standalone partitions, one containing windows 98 and the other windows xp, in order to create a dual boot system similar to that created automatically we need:- Method 1 1. The system to boot from the windows 98 partition. 2. The windows98 partition needs to contain NTLDR NTDETECT.COM BOOT.INI BOOTSECT.DOS (see below) 3. When booted the windows98 partition needs to look for NTLDR, in order to acieve this you could boot the XP install CD and run recovery console and issue the command FIXBOOT X: where X: is the partition letter for WIN98 4. boot.ini in win98 partition should look something like this:- [boot loader] timeout=20 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 C:\ = "Microsoft Windows" This all works fine, system will boot, you will get a menu and you can choose XP which boots ok. Unfortunately you're now left with the tricky bit, how to create a bootsect.dos in order to be able to boot win98 from the menu. At this point you could go onto the internet and find a free utility I came across several while researching this problem in order to create it, and put it in the win98 partition root, however, I did say in a previous post that everything needed was in XP. Method 2. Break windows XP a bit. 1. Boot XP and copy NTDLR, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI onto the win98 partition, and then delete them from the XP partition. In order to do this you will need to use ATTRIB -S -H -R filename first 2. Setup your system so that when it boots it automatically boots windows 98, ie 98 is set as the bootdisk in the bios, and is set to the active partition. If XP is on a second disk, ensure it is also present in the system. 3. Boot XP installation CD. Proceed as if installing, until you get to the screen where it tells you that an existing XP system has been detected and that the boot cd will try to repair it (hit R) or proceed with a fresh install (hit esc). Choose R, XP deletes and recopies the O/S software but does not affect any settings. It also creates the bootsect.dos file in the 98 partition and updates the boot.ini file to dual boot, and updates the 98 partition boot sector. I tried this without deleting the files in the XP partition and it repairs as above but ignores the presence of the 98 partition and remains a single boot system. Any question, feel free ..... Rgds Paul

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Chris... i have a similar situation.. but a question, was XP on your boot drive and 98 on your other disk before you started.... and is XP on an NTFS partition, and, did you have to create any new partitions, ie a FAT32 boot partition??? I ask because i tried last night with PM7, and it told me bootmagic couldnt run on an NTFS drive... hrm i thought... ive got 8 meg unpartitioned space.. ill make that a fat32 boot partition..... bout 30 minutes later, and ive got my win98 boot partition ready for multibooting, however ive broken xp coz it made xp drive G: coz the boot has to be C:, and now xp cant find files so it crashes on startup... im also in a pinch cos after i deleted the c: partition, i cant rename the g: to c: coz i dont have any software that will do it/can see it.. so ive got to put a second instance of xp on my d: drive (which has suddenly become c:???) so i can run partition magic and fix the mess.. NOTE: when partition magic asks if you want to make retore/undo/recovery (cant remember what their called) disks... say yes, no matter how confident you are!!!!!! I wish i did

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Compaq came with NTFS WIN-XP installed and it didnt run office-97 and some games and other programs. So I popped in another disk and installed WIN-98. Now i just cable selected the drives and opened up the case and cut power off to one drive to boot which system I wanted. This was a pain in the butt. I downloaded bootstar ran it in XP and it found both XP and 98 and created a menue and all is well so far (keeping fingers crossed). Took 3 minutes no haggeling at all. XP was on first obviously then 98 was added later.

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Ok I have the OPPOSITE question here. How do I "DISABLE" the NT/XP bootmenu loader program because I am using BOOTMAGIC which came with PM7? I hate having to go through 2 sets and I dont like the bland looking NT loader. I like BOOTMAGIC alot. Willie

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Exactly which 2 operating systems are you dual booting and which order did you install them in. Rgds Paul

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See http://computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/8555.html

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