Dual Boot

PCGAMER · #1 May 11th, 2008, 12:48 PM

umm... scence I have never done this, how do I dual boot windows 98 and xp home eddition? I have 2 different hard drives one with xp on it and one with windows 98 SE.

renegade600 · #2 May 11th, 2008, 01:10 PM

first - if the harddrives came from different computers and the operating system on them came with those computers, then you cannot use the operating systems on any other computer than the one they came with. in other words, if this is the case, you will have to purchase the full retail version of 98 or xp if you want to dual boot.

what operating system is currently on the computer you want to dual boot with?

PCGAMER · #3 May 12th, 2008, 01:36 AM

I have 98 on the computer and a retail version of xp on my other hard drive... the hard drive came from another pc, but the windows xp off a cd from the store (retail version)

**GretaP** · #4 May 12th, 2008, 09:31 AM

Hi PCGAMER,

I take it that you'll be putting the drive with XP into the computer that contains the drive that currently has 98 on it. Once you physically install the XP drive in the other computer (and you'll need to install it as the secondary disk, not the primary, as 98 will not natively boot from secondary disk but XP will), you'll need to perform a repair install of XP:
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
The condition that would be true for your circumstance is "You must use the Windows Setup program to enumerate Plug and Play devices again. This includes the hardware abstraction layer (HAL)."

What the repair install will also do is create the BOOTSECT.DOS file (needed to boot into 98), place the bootloader files (NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM) on the 98 partition and create the boot.ini file on the 98 partition.