My OS is WinXP NTFS. Working fine. Now: I would like to install Win98SE on my second HDD. To do this, I want to disconnect the primary HDD, and make the second HDD -FAT32, partitioned and formatted- as a primary HDD, and install the Win98SE on it. So far sound simple. But: In CMOS I cannot find the good old ˝Autodetect Harddisk˝ facility. Now what? Further more: what happen when I want to put the original HDD with WinXP on it, and the second HDD as well ? Again: where is the Autodetect in CMOS? Is it safe these procedure? By the way, I find a fantastic tiny little MultiBoot program: OSL2000. It's very simple and free. (Regardless which OS you want to boot from.) It looks good, but I haven't try it yet. So, if I can solve this ˝disconnect-connect HDD˝ problem SAFELY, then HEUREKA for everybody who want to run multiply OS! Regard: Charlie Cyrano de Bergerac

well fisrt off u dont need progam to do this .. all u have to do is to edit your boot.ini file .. just connect your second hd as a slave then install the OS . then edit your boot.ini on your first hd (with xp) .. like this .. [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows xp" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 98" /fastdetect

As far as Auto Detect is concerned, if you do not have it in your BIOS then you will have the ability and option to set each Hard drive entry in your Standard CMOS. Set each IDE option where you have a hard drive to AUTO (you may also need to set the LBA mode to AUTO - This varies from BIOS to BIOS). The boot up sequence will then automatically do your detection for you. When you put in your original hard drive, what happens depends on how you set up the two hard drives: 1. If you put it in as master and the Win98SE HDD as slave then you will loose the ability to boot Win98SE. 2. If you put it in as slave and the Win98SE HDD as master then you will loose the ability to boot XP. For option 1 - You will need to edit your booot.ini file on your XP hard drive and add a line for Win98SE as an optional OS to boot. You will get away with doing this as your XP is NTFS. You would not if it was FAT32. Shown below (as an example) is my boot.ini for my triple boot system, which has Win98SE as the default OS to boot: [boot loader] timeout=15 default=C:\ [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect C:\="Microsoft Windows 98se" C:\man100.lnx="Linux Mandrake 10.0" In your case you would add the line: D:\="Microsoft Windows 98se" To your existing boot.ini file. For option 2 - You will need to transfer your boot files and NT Boot loader from your XP hard drive to the Win98SE hard drive by going through a repair install procedure. This is similar to case where you already have a Win98SE and WinXP dual boot set up and you re-install Win98SE. If you visit my website (Homepage link) and look at the section titled "Repair Dual Boot / Triple Boot", you will see the full procedure on how to do this. Hope it helps. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

mosaddique what a long story and hard way for something sooooo easy and stupid as a dual boot .. 1,install 2,edit boot.ini 3 hes alive HES ALIVE !!!!

snipes To you and me simple maybe. However, I was answering questions. And if it is so simple how come you got your boot.ini entry for win98 so wrong? ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

im sorry but theres nothing wrong about my boot.ini .. multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 98" /fastdetect it means that my windows 98 is on the second hard drive ! .. anyway happy thanksgiving to you too ..:)))

I do not want to enter a debate on the subject. However, for your information, your format implies that partition is NT based (i.e. WinNT/2K/XP)not Win9x. That is what it is designed for. The MULTI() syntax indicates to Windows NT/2K/XP that it should rely on the computers BIOS to load system files. This means that the operating system will be using interrupt (INT) 13 BIOS calls to find and load NTOSKRNL.exe and any other files needed to boot Windows NT/2K/XP. Theoretically, this syntax could be used to start Windows NT on any drive in the system. However, this would require that all drives are correctly identified through the standard INT 13 interface; since support for this varies from disk controller to disk controller and most system BIOS only identify a single disk controller through INT 13, in practice it is only safe to use this syntax to start Windows NT from the first two drives connected to the primary disk controller, or the first four drives in the case of a dual-channel EIDE controller. If you do a proper dual boot, by installing Win98 followed by WinXP, you will find that XP wiull create a boot.ini that looks like mine (minus the Linux bit which I added in later). Hope that clarifies it. I am in the process of adding this information in more detail on my website soon. This is to help people who are dual booting for the first time and tend to be unaware of the format of the boot.ini file. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.