Dual-Boot Procedures: Add Win98SE to WinXP (NTFS)

Introduction

You have a Windows XP Installation using the NTFS file system and you decide to add Windows 98SE as a second OS in a dual boot Configuration.

Normal procedure for dual booting Windows Operating Systems is to Install the earlier Operating System first. In this case it is not possible without a re-install of WinXP which you may not wish to do for all the obvious reasons.

A further complication is that the Windows XP is using the NTFS file system and hence not normally accessible to Windows 98SE.

The following procedure shows you how you can achieve this.

Notes:

  1. Drive letters seen when in Windows XP will be slight different.

    2. Your drive letters (as seen by WinXP) will be different to normal. Assuming each drive has only one partition and you have only 1 CDROM drive then:

    Winxp will be drive letter C:
    CDROM will be drive letter D:
    Win98SE will be drive letter E:

    The reason for this is due to the Drive letter alloocation mechanism employed by Windows XP.

  2. You can also use this procedure as a repair procedure to repair dual boot.

    3. If you have a dual boot of WinXP and Win98SE and you re-install Win98SE, you will loose your ability to dual boot.

    You can use this procedure to re-instate your dual boot.

    To do that you need to only carry out the portion of the procedure where you boot with the WinXP CD into the Recovery Console.

    Once in the recovery console: you only need to: fixmbr, fixboot and exit to re-boot.

The Step by Step Procedure

  1. Configure the WinXP Hard drive as a Slave drive.

    2. Remove the Master WinXP hard drive and change the jumpering on it so that it is now a slave drive.
    Reconnect the hard drive back in to the PC as a slave drive.
    WinXP will now not be bootable. We will fix this later.

  2. Configure the hard drive you wish to install Win98SE on as the Master drive.

    3. Ensure that it is jumpered correctly as a Master drive.

  3. Prepare the hard drive for installing Win98SE.

    4. Preparing the hard drive to install an OS requires that you partition and format the hard as necessary.
    If you have not done this already, then look at this fdisk and format procedure.

    Fdisk and Format Procedure for Windows 98SE

  4. Install Win98SE.

  5. Repair the WinXP installation so that it is bootable.

    6. This will require you to boot of the WinXP CD and use the recovery option as follows:

    1. Boot up with your WinXP in your CDROM drive.

      2. Ensure that the boot order in the BIOS is set to boot from CDROM before the hard drive.

    2. The WinXP CD will run its set up routine.

      3. Setup is loading files ......... - Wait for it to complete

      NOTE:
      For those who have their hard drives located on raid channels, you will probably need to load your third party RAID drivers. When the XP CD boots up and displays the Windows XP Setup screen with the following text:

      Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver ...

      At this point you can load your RAID drivers and continue with the repair procedure.

      On completion of setup you will eventually get the following message:
      Welcome to Setup message - Press R to select Recovery Console.

    3. Press r or R to select the recovery option.

      4. You will be prompted as follows:

      [1] D:\Windows

      Which Windows installation would you like to log onto
      (To cancel, press ENTER)? 1 - Select as appropriate (in this case 1).

    4. You will now be prompted to enter the administrator password as follows:

      5. Type the administrator password:
      Enter your root password if you set up one, otherwise press the ENTER key.

    5. You will now be placed in command mode in the D:\Windows directory.

      6. Perform the following actions:

      • type fixmbr - This will alter your Master Boot Record and set it up to boot the NT Boot Loader.

        • You may be prompted whether you want to continue - Answer yes(y) to the cautionary prompt.

      • type fixboot - Writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition..

        • You may be prompted whether you want to continue - Answer yes(y) to the cautionary prompt.

      • type copy d:\ntldr c:\.

      • type copy d:\ntdetect.com c:\.

      • Set a boot.ini file on C: drive to allow you to select either WinXP or Win98SE at boot up.

        • This can be done in one of two ways.

        1. Use bootcfg /rebuild - preferred method.

          • Type bootcfg /rebuild

            • The bootcfg /rebuild command scans the hard disks of the computer for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, or Windows XP installations, and then displays the results. You can add the detected Windows installations.

            You will receive a message that is similar to the following message:

            Total Identified Windows Installs: 1

            [1] D:\Windows
            Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All): y
            Enter Load Identifier: Microsoft Windows XP Professional - (or your own Custom description)
            Enter Operating System Load Options: /fastdetect

            Note: It will not identify Windows 98 SE - You have to add it in manually.

          • Type exit

            • The PC will now re-boot.

            As Win98SE is not yet a bootable option in the boot menu and WinXP is the only bootable OS, it will not give you a menu and boot straight into WinXP.

        2. Copy and edit the existing boot.ini file as follows:

          3. NOTE:
          This method has a problem. The recovery console does not allow you to edit files.

          If you want to edit a file using the Recovery Console, it is easiest to copy it to a floppy, walk to another computer, edit it there, then copy it back. This part of the procedure assumes your will be doing exactly that.

          • Copy the boot.ini file from WinXP hard drive (root directory) to a floppy drive

          • Now using another PC edit the boot.ini file on the floppy drive as follows:

            1. Remove the Read-only attribute against the boot.ini file

              2. With the mouse, select the the boot.ini file, right click and select properties
              Uncheck the Attributes box indicating Read-only and click apply.

            2. Open the boot.ini file for editing

              3. With the mouse, select the the boot.ini file, right click and select open
              Select notepad if it does not open with notepad and asks which application to use.

              Your boot.ini will look something like 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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

              NOTE: The /noexecute=optin will only be there if you have WinXP SP2 installed.

              Change rdisk(0) to rdisk(1) in both the lines above.
              This is because we have moved the WinXP hard drive from master to slave

              Save the changes once you have completed editing.

              Change the files attribute back to Read-only.

            3. Copy the modfied boot.ini file from floppy to the Win98SE hard drive.

              4. Win98SE hard drive is now the active hard drive and we have already copied all the boot loader files to it. We need to do the same for the boot.ini file.

              Copy the modfied boot.ini file from the floppy to Win98SE hard drives root directory.

            4. Type exit

              5. The PC will now re-boot. Fix any errors encountered.

  6. Add Win98SE as a bootable option.

    7. To do this you need to edit the boot.ini file on the active hard drive and add Win98SE as a bootable OS in the selection menu as follows:

    Note:
    There will now be two versions of boot.ini. One on the WinXP hard drive (c:)and one in the Win98SE hard drive (e: - Drive letter may vary - see introductory note about drive letters). The active one is in the Win98SE hard drive.

    1. Remove the Read-only attribute against the boot.ini file

      2. With the mouse, select the the boot.ini file, right click and select properties
      Uncheck the Attributes box indicating Read-only and click apply.

    2. Open the correct boot.ini file for editing

      3. With the mouse, select the the boot.ini file (from the Win98SE hard drive), right click and select open
      Select notepad if it does not open with notepad and asks which application to use.

      Your boot.ini will look something like this:

      [boot loader]
      timeout=30
      default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
      [operating systems]
      multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

      NOTE: The /noexecute=optin will only be there if you have WinXP SP2 installed.

      Add the following line to the end of the file:
      C:\="Microsoft Windows 98se"

      If you want Win98SE as the default boot OS then replace the default line with this line:
      default=C:\

    3. Save the changes and reboot your PC and test all boot menu options work correctly.

      4. Fix any errors encountered.
      Some of the more common boot errors associated with boot.ini files are explained in the following:
      All you ever wanted to know about boot.ini files

  7. Final notes.

    8. Enjoy your dual boot system.

    As a result of this you will have the boot loader now on both drives. This has a distinct advantage that, should you tire of Windows98SE and want to get rid of it altogether then all you need to do is to swap the master (win98se) drive with the slave (WinXP) drive (i.e re jumper them) and format the Win98SE drive. You will be back to your original config before you added Win98SE as a dual boot option.

    Should you want to go the other way (i.e. remove WinXP and Keep Win98SE then just boot with Win98SE boot up floppy and type sys c: and then repartition and format the WinXP hard drive as a FAT32 partition.

    Occasionally you may get a problem resulting in not being able to boot into Win98.
    This usually occurs when you have a corrupt or missing BOOTSECT.DOS. If that happens then carry out the following repair procedure.
    Repair Corrupt or Missing BOOTSECT.DOS
© MAK 2004
End of Document