Trouble 98 NT dual boot?????????????

[Hardware911]

i have win98se on my machine right now and im adding NT for a dual boot.i made a second partion on my HD and booted up off the NT disk to start the NT setup. i format the 2nd partition with the NT setup to fat then i procede to install NT it loads some files and then says to reboot. when system tries to reboot NT does not start system hangs. the second partition is active so it should boot off it right?
what am i doing wrong?
and where can i get partition magic? (DL)
thanks

 

[Tiberia]

If the partition 1 is FAT32, you will have problems with dual boot.

I have never got dual-boot working properly with the 1st partition FAT32. As a result I always make the 1st partition a 250 - 500MB FAT16 partition and dump the i386 and win98 folders from the CDs there and use it as a gloryfied boot partition.

The problem is that both Win98 and NT4 want to put files on partition 1. You BIOS maps D: to C: and C: to D: when the second partition is active - NT4 access the HDD by device ID, and will try and use partition1, i.e. in your case the Win98 partition.

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// Black Holes are where God divided by zero //

 

[Tiberia]

I take some of that back - you cannot install NT4 while your drive letters are mapped around - sorry, just re-read your post.

You have:

HD1:
..Partition1: C: FAT32 (Primary)
..Partition2: D: NTFS (Primary)
Which ever partition you set active will become C: when you boot into a DOS-type mode.
When you hit NT your second partition would actually become D: - this is the problem.

Dont make the second partition active, boot from CD, install to the "empty" partition (I recommend zapping it completely, then create it again in the NT installation manager).

This will still give you the problem that if your 1st partition is FAT32 it cannot write the NTDLR to it...but if you set the second partition active NT will write some files into the wrong place (into the boot block of the 1st partition).

You will probably need to make the NT4 boot disks and use an ATAPI driver from NT4 SP4 or higher if your drive is > 8Gb too.

Well, basically Win98 in a primary partition of your HDD is a pain in the ass - it pretty much prevents anything else going onto the HDD.

The problem is caused by both NT and Win98 just handling HDDs in a completely different way;

NT4 looks at the entire HDD as a device, Win98 gets its info from the BIOS - the result is NT is more stable and less dependent (= more robust) but that Win98 is a lot "easier" to get up and running with new devices (which isn't exactly true either, so unlucky Win98 - just my opinion).

The only good way to get around it, requiring no patches or special disks is to make that small FAT16 C: BOOT-partition. Also means you can install 8 different OSes across many HDDs as every OS (NT, Win2k, Win9x, Win3x, DOS, LINUX, Solaris, ... , get the picture?) can read/write FAT16.

If you want to, or are planning to add different OSes, this is a good way to go.
For ultra compatibility make another 16MB empty partition at the front of another (different physical) HDD to make LINUX/UNIX even more convenient.

Never again will you need to find those /&%$(§$ floppies.

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// Black Holes are where God divided by zero //

[This message has been edited by Tiberia (edited 04-05-2000).]

 

[Hardware911]

is there any way to move the primary dos partition?? any programs i can DL?

and my second partition is formated in FAT and NT sets that as my primary before install. so shouldnt it boot from it?

 

[Tiberia]

It does - but it gets confused then the BIOS maps the drive wrongly (which is what you do when you boot from the 2nd partition of a HDD, your BIOS has to map it to C:, which is wrong).

Re-read my second post, I edited a couple of things (but basically the same) to make it more clear.

I can write you an essay on why it don't work, but it don't work that way

You can possibly move the partition using partition magic - but I recommend backing up the Win98, and re-doing the HDD:
HD1:
..Part1: C: FAT16 250MB C:/C:/C:
..Part2: D: FAT32 Win98 D:/-/D:
..Part3: E: NTFS NT4 -/D:/E:

The last column specifies the drive letters in Win98, NT4 before SP4, NT4 after SP4.
NOTE: The FAT32 drive will become visible after SP4! So you NT system drive will change - use the disk-administrator to remove the drive letter for the Win98 partition and then change the drive letter of the NT partition back to D:.
Install Win98 first

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// Black Holes are where God divided by zero //

 

[Tiberia]

I have had this setup win 1996 (with NT4 and Win9x) and its always worked wonderfully.

Since 1998 I developed the trick with hiding the Win98 drive because of FAT32 being visible (not accesable).

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// Black Holes are where God divided by zero //

 

[TNproud2b]

Keep going, Tiberia, I'm learning a lot. I had fits getting NT4 to install on my system. I finally achieved success, but couldn't tell you how I did it. Same scenerio as Hardware911, Win98 on C: - trying to get NT4 to load. No boot into NT.

 

[Hardware911]

im an idiot i have a spare 6gig hd on the side i can back up on that and redo the whole drive from scratch...im gonna try that..

thanks man
we will see!!