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I am dual-booting Win98 and WinXP. Win98 is installed on C:, and XP is installed on partition D: using NTFS.
The problem started when I ran Norton Utilities 2002 disk optimization on drive C:
It optimized the registry, and crashed trying to optimize C:
Now only XP will load. If I select Win98 as the system I wish to load, I get "invalid system disk" error.
Symantic told me to reload windows?
I would like to try to repair Win98 or re-install only Win98 without touching XP.
Please help
Everyone should know that Symantec's utilities, in many cases - create problems where none existed.
I stopped using them years ago.
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but now to answer your ?
You can reinstall 98 on top of itself, then use the 'repair' utility on the Win XP setup disk. (to restore your dual boot)
Richard
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In my opinion, you will always be cross linking files between your dual boot operating systems when both operating systems are active at the same time. Yes, this dual boot setup that employs a primary partition and a logical drive in the extended partition works great for a season.
But the very best way to have multiple operating systems is to place each operating system on its' very own primary partition where only one operating system is booted into at a time and the other operating system is not locatable by the other op system. No corrupted files between op systems and no cross linked files.
Partition Magic 7 is a $70 program, available for $30 via Pricewatch.com, follow the instructions at Powerquest.com for multiboot scenarios.
Richard Tolbertson
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Please allow me to add this:
Norton Utilities should have run great on your Windows 98 C: drive.
Unfortunately, with this style of dual booting, all op systems visable to each other,look for more of these kinds of problems.
Purchase Partition Magic
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Richard,
I wonder at your comment about "cross linking files"? What do you mean? How is more than one OS operating at a time when you've only booted one (leaving the VMware software out of it)?
The only problems I've ever had multi booting, multiple OSs, across multiple HDDs, were of my own making. I've been doing it for over 4 years, using Microsoft's bootloaders and LILO.
MB,If you follow rgutier2's advice, the Repair you'd have to do involves using the XP Recovery Console commands fixmbr and fixboot. Hopefully you'll still have the BOOTSECT.DOS file on the C: drive. That's the Win98 boot sector that the XP bootloader will need to startup Win98.
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Michael,
A good example would be here. Norton Utilities should have run fine in Windows 98. It stumbled on this type of dual boot. This comes to no surprise to me. Both op systems were visable to Norton, neither were hidden. I have not ever been successful running a dual boot the way that you describe. It lasts for awhile until problems start coming in causing reinstalls of operating systems. Also, the operating systems on this kind of dual boot are not hidden. If they were hidden, you could not find both op systems listed in your windows explorer.
Richard
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Run the 98 cabs again in DOS and make sure that you tell it to run it install on the C:.... This should fix the issue.... It will not delete all the programs you had on your C: but just fix any issues....
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Richard,
I believe what you are saying is that using partitioning software and its boot loader, is different and more stable than having XP create and install the XP partition and boot loader.Thanks
Mike
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One other question,does it matter if Win98 or XP is the o.s. that is installed on drive c:
I already own Partition Magic 6 and realize that I would not be able to install it to XP, but can I not manage the partitions from within Win98Mike
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Richard,
Notice his XP still boots and works fine. Therefore the XP boot sector and bootloader files (NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR, BOOT.INI) still work as their supposed to. It is possible that the BOOTSECT.DOS file got nailed, put not probable.
By your definition, it would seem as though Norton could bugger up any OS that is on a drive with more than one partition.
Poppycock.
Given a working XP, the error MB received, -invalid system disk - was a Win98 error caused by Norton crashing the system. Norton was run on the Win98 drive and never touched the XP drive. It couldn't, as its NTFS and Win98 (by itself) won't recognize an NTFS drive.
You didn't answer about the "cross linking files". Perhaps you meant when a program is loaded to one location for each OS that uses it?
MB,From an OS viewpoint, it doesn't matter what the drive letter is. One of my systems has drives C: to Q:, spread over three drives, booting one of six OS's. The order you load the OS's does matter; if your not using a 3rd party boot manager and you're not sure of how to handle the boot sector repair procedures. So does the format you choose to use on the partitions.
3rd party bootloaders are no more or less stable than the Microsoft or Linux bootloaders. As you have experienced, something can always go wrong.
Its probably more than you want to know, but check out other dual/multi boot problems posted here. XP post 16228, W2k post 28743 and trvlr's links in W2k post 28707 to name a couple.
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