getting rid of w98 from dual boot system

[redmike]

Hi,

I just set up a dual boot system by adding W2k to a W98 system and can't believe how well it went.

I now have W98 on "C" and lots of programs on "D" and W2k is on "F".

My intention over the next few days is to get all of the programs from C & D working on F and a new G drive.

When this has been done and I no longer need the C & D drives what do I do ?

Can't be quite as simple as formatting them and renaming F & G (I have Partition Magic) to C & D can it ??

I have Norton and Office on C and will soon have them on G as well, I think.

Any help and suggestions would be much appreciated.

thanks

Mike

 

[netwalker1]

you have to make the F drive Active ,, and you have to move the 3 files ( NTDETECT.COM , ntldr , boot.ini ) from C to F.

you can make it active using the Disk management in Windows 2000
or fdisk from windows 98





Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[redmike]

Thanks Mohamed. That was fast, I'm still downloading SP4 which is taking ages even with a cable connection.

So after I make the F drive active and move the files across, should I then format the drives and rename F & G ?

Or formtat, and then merge them ?

regards,

Mike

 

[netwalker1]

first do this ,, and after you feel that everything is ok ,, you can format C and D
after this you can merge or rename ,, but you have to ensure that the 3 files which I mentioned are on the Boot Drive which is active ..

in the boot.ini file ,, yo will find the path of the windows 2000 ... you should correct it to point to the new path of the windows ,, however where you put the Windows 2000 files ..



Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[redmike]

thanks a lot for the help. I'll do what you say and spend the next few days getting all of my programs working properly on the new partitions before I delete anything.

Once I'm only running W2k (this laptop can't run XP) should I change to NTFS (everything is FAT 32 at the moment) or will some programs then give problems ?

regards

Mike

 

[netwalker1]

nothing will give a problem , just windows 98 will not be able to see the ntfs drives

Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[redmike]

"you have to make the F drive Active ,, and you have to move the 3 files ( NTDETECT.COM , ntldr , boot.ini ) from C to F.

you can make it active using the Disk management in Windows 2000
or fdisk from windows 98"

Almost ready for this now after about 20 hours of re-installing programs <phew>.

I just want to be absolutely sure about this because ...

In disk management my C (w98) drive is marked primary and system. My f (W2k) drive is marked logical and boot but the &quot;mark partition active&quot; is grayed out.

Do I have to move the 3 files above or can I copy them ?

Please give me the order in which to do the copy or move and making the F drive the primary.

thanks a lot - this area obviously isn't my forte

Mike

 

[wolluf]

Mike,

First thing to do is make yourself a 2k boot floppy (which will boot your 2k installation if something goes wrong - which as you're moving the boot sector is possible). Copy the files mentioned (ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini) to a newly formatted floppy disk. Then edit the boot.ini to look like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT=&quot;Win2k P3&quot; /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT=&quot;Win2k P1&quot; /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT=&quot;Win2k P2&quot; /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT=&quot;Win2k P4&quot; /fastdetect

This is because 2k is currently on partition 3, but may be partition 1 or 2 (unlikely 4) after you remove other partitions.

Now - is your F: drive a primary partition or a logical drive in an extended partition? (I'm suspecting logical). If its a primary, you can go ahead and copy those 3 files to it (remember you may need to edit boot.ini, depending which 'number' partition 2k is on after removing old ones). You will also need to run 2k's recovery console & its fixboot command (fixboot x:, where x: is the 2k drive asseen from recovery console -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;229716.

This will create a 2k boot sector in the partition - ie, make it bootable).

If F: is a logical drive, I suggest giving up current approach (unless you've got something like Partition Magic, which could make it a primary partition - and in fact even consolidate the first 3 partitions into one), backup and install a fresh copy of 2k after removing exisiting partitions and creating new one(s).

HTH - Please post back if you're having problems or have more questions.

 

[redmike]

&quot;If F: is a logical drive, I suggest giving up current approach (unless you've got something like Partition Magic, which could make it a primary partition - and in fact even consolidate the first 3 partitions into one), backup and install a fresh copy of 2k after removing exisiting partitions and creating new one(s).&quot;

F: is a logical drive. I have Partition Magic (a late version &quot;7&quot; I think) but it doesn't give me the option of making F: a primary partition because the option is grayed out. I could consolidate B: C: & D: and then create a new primary partition and then put a new copy of W2k on it but what will I then do with F: and H: (H: has all the W2k programs on it that are referenced to F: ??

Boy and I thought that this would be easy ?

In the meantime I'll buy some diskettes of which I only own one at the moment and that's a W98 start up disk.

thanks for the time and effort.

Mike

 

[redmike]

BTW .. this is what my boot.ini file looks like at the moment. It will of course look different if &quot;we&quot; do the partition changes.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT=&quot;Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional&quot; /fastdetect
C:\=&quot;Microsoft Windows&quot;

I'm being very careful with this as this is the only system that I have. I made a clone of it when it was W98 only bt it would be a pity to have to go back to that. W2k is working really well after the last couple of days of work.

Mike

 

[wolluf]

Think you'd need to consolidate D E F and perhaps H, before PM will let you make primary (if all are logical drives in one extended partition).

I'm not a great fan of extended partitions (due to bad previous experiences), so not sure about this. Have you enought space on drive to make room for 9another copy of) the 2k installation (using PM to create space)? If so, will PM let you copy the 2k logical drive/partition (using its copy partition feature) to created space, as a primary partition? If so, you should then be able to boot from this partition (which would probably be (6) for boot.ini - but you can try..). then you could start sorting out the rest.

PS. But in your position I would (as I suggested before) backup, clear down the drive and do a fresh install of 2k. Btw - if you do want to dual boot - I'd also suggest using a third party boot manager (I use

http://www.boot-us.com

- there's Boot Magic - which I think comes with PM7, and a host of others). You can then make each operating system independent (ie, put its own boot sector on the 'primary' partition you install it into - rather than M$ just using one boot sector on C. This of course, is just my opinion. Good luck, whichever course you take (2k is of course much better than 98 in most respects).

 

[redmike]

thank for the continuing help. With partition magic I am now down to C which has W98 on it. And G which has W2k on it and H which has the W2k programs on it. I had intended to make a new primary partition and then try to merge it with G but surprise surprise PM is now offering to let me make G a primary partiion.

So I'll make G a primary partition.

I have made PM safety disks but will remake the W2k boot floppy and see if PM will let me make the F drive &quot;active&quot;.

I have no idea what happens about renaming the drives ?

Will PM change F to B ??

Anyway I'll check back with you when I'm ready to make the last plunge !

I have installed Boot magic and made safety disks but will remake them after all the merging has been done althouhg I won't need a dual boot option in the forseeable future.

In the middle of this I picked up (or my system did a back door Roxy Trojan and my cable connection has been working at the speed of an ISDN one for last 24 hours.

thanks again,

Mike

 

[redmike]

I am concerned that making the partition that contains W2k a primary partition will mean that W98 SE will not recognise the drive that it's (W98)on because it will be hidden.

In previous post &quot;will PM change F to B ??&quot; - I meant F: to C:

Also how can PM make the W2k drive the active one without adding the boot.ini and other two files ?

Can I add them now or will it be wrong to have them in two partitions ? Do I put them in the root directory ?

thanks

Mike

 

[wolluf]

Mike,

PM will change drive letters - though I'm not sure if it will change 2k system drive letter (2k's disk management doesn't let you - M$ has published this tweak though -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188).

But its not a good idea - because you also need to change all the registry entries to point to the new drive also. I'd just run 2k as F:

Making 2k partition primary has no effect on 98 partition (ie, it does't hide it - you have to elect to do that, using for example PM tools). I've got (currently) 2 hard drives, one with 4 primaries, the other with 3 (booting 2k, NT Workstation, NT server, XP, 98 and QNX - none hidden. The system will attempt to boot the active primary partition on the disk. So to make it boot 2k, you will need to put the 3 boot sector files in the root of the (newly primary) 2k partition, run fixboot on it and make it active (if you just make it active, it will still try to boot from it, but finding no boot sector, it will fail with appropriate message). As mentioned before, you may need to 'play' with boot.ini entries (partition bit). There's no problem with them being present in 2 partitions - as both are (or should be) now independently bootable.

I keep plugging this - but I would at some point wipe the drive and clean install 2k. You're building a lot of 'history', and my experience of Windows says it will come back and bite you when you least expect - even if all seems well when you've finally got it all running as you want.
Good luck.

 

[redmike]

Thanks for hanging in there and for the caveat about clean installing.

Normally I would have done the clean install but I'm in Israel on a job assignment and only have this laptop with me. Secondly I am pretty good in certain areas of IT (not this one obviously and I wouldn't like to have come this far and stop without having learned as much as possible.

As things stand now, after I've done more stuff, W2k boot management says C: is a &quot;healthy system&quot; and F: (W2k) is a &quot;healthy boot&quot;. ??

PM still says that C: is &quot;active&quot; but offers the option of making F: &quot;active.

So I'm not sure about the above ? If F: is &quot;healthy boot&quot; then if I either hide the C: or delete it then will F: boot ?

I told PM to show F: which is why I believe that it is &quot;healthy boot&quot;.

I don't know how to get to the recovery console now. If I put the W2k disk into the CD and boot then I still get the PM boot manager on start up offering me either of the hard drives.

It looks like we're almost there - hopefully ...

If I end up working here a lot longer then I'll buy an inexpensive desktop system, get that up and running and then come back to this one.

thanks again,

Mike

 

[redmike]

Ok )

I took this thing by the scruff of the neck today enen though it is the 13th.

Made a set of W2k boot up disks; entered the repair console and ran fixboot, and now ...

Disk manager says,

C: healthy

F: healthy system

PM says, C:hidden primary F: healthy system.

$64,000 question now is can I format drive C: ??

thanks for all the help, I wouldn't have got there without you !!

Mike

 

[redmike]

you might find

http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/dual/removedualboot.html

very interesting.

Only thing holding me back right now is the 3rd party (bootmagic) program. I can't test my rescue disks with it installed and I'm concerned that I won't be able to boot after I disable it.

I have sent an email to tech support at PM

regards

Mike