Dual Boot: W98SE and WMe

[FZWG]

Appreciate some opinions.

Thinking about setting up a PC with W98SE and WMe, dual boot situation.

Have a 20GB hard drive that can be partitioned, or also have a second 20GB hard drive that can be added to the PC.

What are your thoughts on:

1. Should the current harddrive be partitioned, or would it be better to install the second hard drive?

2. Are there any good freeware, tried and tested, boot manager utilities to take care of the dual boot? Have Partition Magic 4.0 that contains Boot Magic, but do not know if version 4.0 accomodates Windows Me.

Thanks.

[Kubie]

FZWG,

I won't be much help but I just started settin' up a dual boot on a single 30gig HDD. So far I wiped the drive and FDISK'd a 5gig partition, formatted and installed W98SE. The next O/S is W2K but I'm getting help doing this and will be working on the next step pretty soon.
I have Partition Magic 8.0 and I'll see if it has a boot section I can use.
Gonna follow this thread and learn some more.
Carl

[bailey]

it really should be fairly simple, just a matter of flowing the on screen instructions.
once w98 is install and all set up the way you want it.
just run the setup for the next o/s you want to install.
it will ask if you want to upgrade or install on another partition
select the new location and then it will reboot and when it restarts, it will detect w98 and set up the boot menu, select the new o/s and it will then continue the normal installation.

when it is done, you will have a dual boot system.

[GaryRouth]

. . . and if you've got nothing else to use the extra 20gb drive for, sure- why not use it for the WinMe install. That way you can leave your Win98 as it is. If you follow the step bailey posted, it really is that easy. No need for a third party boot manager. Also, by using the extra 20gb drive, no need to use a partitioning program like Partition Magic to non-destructively move partitions around. And you'll have lots of room for each. If the 20gb extra drive has info on it you want to keep, shouldn't be a problem, if the drive is formatted with FAT32. Might want to run a virus scan first, just to make sure it's clean.

Sounds like a fun project
. . . Gary

[Kubie]

GaryRouth,

It is fun! glc helped me set up the w98/W2k dual boot on a 30gig.

One thing I have to remember is that when I'm in W2K and d/l'ing a proggie, it wants to install it on the C:\ drive and W2k is on my F:\ drive.

Carl

[FZWG]

Thanks for the replies.

Installing WMe on a second HDD looks as if it is easy enough. However, would the second HDD have to be hooked up as a primary to install WMe, and after that as a secondary HDD?

Also, how would one switch from one OS to another without a boot manager?

[RayH]

Personally, I don't know if there's enough difference between W98SE and ME to make a dual boot machine worth the effort. I'd dual boot either with either W2K or XP.

In any event, if using a single drive, I'd make a third partition to share the data between the two OS's.

If you install ME after on the second drive or another partition after W98SE (which would be on C), Windows would make a boot manager.

An alternative is to install the ME as the master on a second hard drive, leaving the Windows 98 SE as the slave. But make the ME drive be a hot swap. Disconnect the Windows 98SE drive when you install the ME.

When you want to run ME, just shove it in. When you want to run 98SE leave the ME drive out. The computer will boot to the first drive it finds.

[FZWG]

"But make the ME drive be a hot swap. Disconnect the Windows 98SE drive when you install the ME."

Lost me....

Are you talking about using a HD case to swap hard drives, or something else?

[GaryRouth]

You know, FZWG, my memory has this distant bell ringing in it . . . OOOPS!

I think Ray has a point about hot-swapping. And yes, I imagine he's talking about using a mobile rack (about $10) to do the hot-swap.

The reason (one that I forget about, since most dual boots are with an NT/2000/XP and a Win9x version, ---> is that you can't dual boot two Win9x versions in the same computer (unless you're hot-swapping drives) unless you use a third-party boot manager (see, you were right the 1st time). This is because the Win9x versions all use the same boot file in the mbr: so the WinMe install would overwrite the Win98 mbr - even though it's installed to a separate physical hard drive. WinNT/2000/XP would install the NTldr file and you'd have multiboot menu.

You know maybe reboot will drop by with the easiest way to do this, he's got more experience with multiboots.

One rather crazy way might be use Grub (the Linux bootloader = it's free), I wonder if that would work for dual-booting Win98/ME. I've never tried it.

There is a program called "AddAWins" the calls itself freeware - but I haven't any experience with it, either [and it seems to want to install something when I visit it's information page - so you might want to research it a little before trying it] It's available over at http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/dual/dualboots.html

. . . And the MultiBoot article here in PC Mech's OS articles section mentions XOSL, which is also free.

so it turns out I haven't answered your question at all. . . My experience with BootMagic was very positive, but it was also for Linux multibooting, but I'll check a little later on to see if it would do the trick
. . . Gary

[FZWG]

Thanks Gary.

You have clarified matters.

Might go for the rack. There are two HDDs available anyway.

Thought a 3rd party utility would be necessary if installing both OSs on the same HDD,...from reading here and there.

Right now, just tossing some thoughts around. Plenty of great minds around to get some opinions.

[Swimmfree200]

I wouldnt recomend winME at all. Ive had so many problems with it. I think its a really bad OS. If u want a dual boot do winXP and linux of some sort. I use Red hat 9

[GaryRouth]

post nap-time post

Ok, I'm awake now! --> Looks like Partition Magic 4 was the first version to include Boot Magic - which is hard to find much information about nowadays, since PowerQuest only likes to provide information for the last two versions. I looked at some reviews from March 1999, and they were favorable as to how easy it was to create multi-boot systems with Boot Magic: but the most recent version of Windows mentioned by any of these was Win98 (Windows Me hadn't been released yet, and I don't think Win98se came out until May 1999?) So - it does support FAT32, but I don't know if WinMe would boot from that version of BootMagic or not.

On the bright side, Partition Magic 8's version of Boot Magic can boot just about any OS on the planet, and it can be had for $27 with free shipping http://www.softwareoutlets.com/122/p...ampaign=google

I've used versions 5, 6, & 7 of Partition Magic for various Linux/Windows combos, and have used Grub and LiLo = they all worked well. I don't think you can go wrong using any of them.

I won't get into the WinMe good or bad debate, for I'm a great fancier of operating systems of all stripes. I tend to find something good in most of them - they each have their own strengths. Someday I might add a WinMe partition or drive to one of my systems, just to revisit that OS - which I rarely get to see or use (here at the lab it's mostly Win2000 - and previously Win98se).

So maybe sometime I'll catch up to all the fun you're having
. . . Gary

[RayH]

[b]FZWG[b] About hot swapping the drives: You can do this for any dual boot. It doesn't require any boot managers. The computer will automatically seek the first hard drive and boot it regardless of jumper position.

The advantage of this is if you want to get rid of an OS, it's much easier.

With a dual rack, you leave the hard drives jumpered as cable select, putting the OS you wish to boot in the computer. The position of the hard drive is only necessary if you wish to access data that may be on the other hard drive.

With a single rack, you leave one hard drive in the computer jumpered as slave or secondary cable select. With the rack removed, the computer will boot this drive.

The other OS is in the rack, jumpered as master or primary cable select. When you want to boot this, you just push the rack in.

Under this single rack, one might leave a Windows 9x as slave and put 2000/XP in the rack. This is because under their native file formats XP can access 9x files.

I just learned about this hot swap method myself in a discussion with someone a few days ago. I'm not using it myself in my new build because any backup hard drive I have is going to slow my machine way down.

[RayH]

[b]Kubie[b] I'm building myself a new computer that will dual boot to Windows 98SE and XP Pro on an 80 GB drive. I'm going to put Windows 98SE on a 4.5 C; XP on a 12.5 GB D; and the remainder of the drive (E) will be FAT 32 so I can share files between the two operating systems.

When I download I just download everything to E. Generally, when installing things, the programs will find the correct partition depending upon what is booted. But once in a while, there are things that will want to install to C. Usually a temp file. That usually doens't cause a problem unless I want to install the same thing to both operating systems.

I don't really plan to use Windows 98SE much. But since I have a ton of software, I don't plan to purchase anything for XP I can do with Windows 98SE.

[FZWG]

Thanks for the info, RayH.