Win98 boot disk can't see/access 2nd HD

I believe it may be a problem with how DOS and XP make drive assignments.

Xp allows you to assign drive letters in any order desired for drives other than the boot volume.

In DOS (and Windows 9X) drives are assigned letters by a hierarchal method.

For your setup, DOS will assign drive letters as follows:

C: Primary partition on first physical drive
D: Primary partition on second physical drive
E: Logical drive on extended partition on first drive
F: Logical drive on extended partition on second drive
G: First removable media drive

When you boot from a W98 startup disk, the G: drive will be a RAM drive that contains the DOS tools.
Your CD drive would be H:

What I suspect is happening, is that XP modifies the MBR on the second drive to allow for the way it assigns drive letters.

Alternately, was either drive setup with a utility from the drive manufacture, often referred to as a drive or BIOS overlay?
If so, you need to follow a special boot sequence to boot from a DOS floppy and access the drive.

Chas

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Chas said:
Alternately, was either drive setup with a utility from the drive manufacture, often referred to as a drive or BIOS overlay?
If so, you need to follow a special boot sequence to boot from a DOS floppy and access the drive.
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I don't think so, I simply had the BIOS auto detect both drives (they appear as master 1 and master 2, since I have a cd-writer as slave on the 1st IDE). How would I know if a utility was used?

You did not specifically mention the file system of the first hard drive where XP and Application reside.
However, I would guess it is NTFS. This would explain everything.
Because Win 98 Startup disk does not recognize NTFS, it will only see your second hard drive as C: and D:.
Once you boot to WinXP, the Windows sees both the hard drives, hence C:, D:, E:, and F:.

Unless you use a third party boot manager, installing Windows 98 after Windows XP (NT4.0 or 2000) is not advised because Windows 98 will overwrite some system files that Window XP (NT 4.0 or 3000) requires and WinXP will become very unstable.

Wcp:
Both drives are fat32. Also, it is not seeing the second drive as you surmised, it is seeing the first, I can tell by the files that are there when I do a dir on both C: and D:, definitely the first drive. So dos is still screwy.

You have me worried though when it comes to XP. If I install win98 on the second drive, why would it affect XP on the first drive? And if it did, how would a bootmanager help? If win98 corrupts XP files when installing (on separate drives?) I don't understand where the bootmanager comes in as helping XP?

IN any event, I have Linux on the first drive as well, and I use LILO from it to boot to the different OS's, thus not relying on XP's boot.ini.

First the problem.

When you accessed the drives via the Win98 boot disk did you do a directory search on each drive and confirm what was in them. The reason I ask is that the Win98 Boot disk loads a very basic DOS system. This will automatically label the first partition on the first HDD as C: and the first aprtition on the 2nd HDD as D: it will then go back and label the remaining logical partitions on the first HDD as E: etc and do the same for the 2nd HDD.

Another point to consider is that after it has found a Primary partition on a HDD it will look for an Extended partiion with Logical drives within it. If you have created multiple Primary partitions or straight partitions without doing an Extended partition first (possible and common default method in XP) the DOS may not be recognising the later partitions. Also DOS has drive size recognition problems over 4GB, sometimes will work sometime not.

Now the info you DID NOT want to hear. You will need to load a third party boot manager if you load Win 98 on the PC AFTER loading Win XP. By default Microsoft operating systems will let you load a newer operating system and establish dual boot between the old and the new. This works because the new software recognises the old. But when you load an older system over the new the older program can not recognise the newer software and sees it as a corupt installation and seeks to load over it replacing files willy nilly, only it will also keep some system files as they have'newer' version dates. result is a totally stuffed install that wont load either properly.

Use of a third party boot manager can solve this, or a tottal reload of Win 98 followed by Win XP.

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eebywater said:
When you accessed the drives via the Win98 boot disk did you do a directory search on each drive and confirm what was in them.
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As stated previously I did do a DIR on both drives that show up in dos, and they are definitely the contents of the 2 paritions on the first hard drive. The contents of the second hard drive are not available/accessible.

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If you have created multiple Primary partitions or straight partitions without doing an Extended ... Also DOS has drive size recognition problems over 4GB, sometimes will work sometime not.
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I'll have to take another look at the partitioning (have to reboot to dos again), but I'm pretty sure both drives have one primary and then an extended partition on each.
As for the size, DOS can see the first drive's partitions which are both 30GB, the second drive only has a 5GB and 2GB so doesn't make sense that it would see the larger but not the smaller ones . Again, will have to veryfy the partition types and get back to you.

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Now the info you DID NOT want to hear. You will need to load a third party boot manager if you load Win 98 on the PC AFTER loading Win XP.
...
But when you load an older system over the new the older program can not recognise the newer software and sees it as a corupt installation and seeks to load over it replacing files willy nilly, only it will also keep some system files as they have 'newer' version dates. result is a totally stuffed install that wont load either properly.
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I'm still unclear on this:
1) If I'm installing win98 on a completely different drive and partition than winXP is on, why would XP files be replaced? Win98 would be going on the second drive (partition F:) so why would Xp files on C: on the first drive be affected? or are you specifically talking about the boot sectors for the 2 win OS's? Would they both be on the first hard drive. Might they be overwritten?
2) How does a 3rd party bootmanager come into play? If files are replaced incorrectly at install time how would a bootmanager help? Also, I have Linux installed as well and use its bootmanager LILO to boot to whatever OS I want, so would I need a 3rd party bootmanager and is so, why?

In any case, can't even get that far yet until I get DOS to recognize the second H/D... BTW, when I run FDISK in dos it DOES see both hard drives... only returning to dos itself.. that's when the 2nd isn't accessible.
FYI: here is the output from FDISK:
~~~
Fixed Disk Drive Status
Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 12624 100%
C: 31989
D: 32499
1004 (*-Linux swap partition)
12661 (*-Linux 7.1 partition)
2 7334 7 100%
E: 5326
F: 2000

(1 MByte = 1048576 bytes)

*- These 2 are Linux partitions (EXT2 format)
~~~

Well, I tried something else, now I'm more confused than before:

-On the first HD, I created a new partition and copied what I used to have on E: from the second drive to it. So it became the new E: in PQMagic (Fdisk saw the same). Then I repartitioned the entire 2nd hard drive into ONE large logical drive, thus it became F: (now empty).
In dos, I could now see the E: drive content because now it was on the first HD. Still couldn't see the second drive though (which should be F:, as it shows in Fdisk and PQmagic).

BUT! when I boot to XP now, the new partition on the first drive is G:?? Not only is it now E: as supposed to be but skipped F: and went to G:?? And the second drive that SHOULD be F: is back to E:??

Wha??? So now Dos sees the first drive (C: D: and E:) but still won't see the second, AND XP has swapped the drives E: and F:??

What the heck is going on? Why is the logical partition on the second drive taking precedence over the 3rd partition on the first drive? It isn't primary, ONLY C: is primary... all the rest are logical drives on extended partitions.

Halp!

I personnaly would have installed win98 1st. This will form a base for multi-boot with O/S like Linux/XP/2Kpro.

The choice is your to make!

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Uch sad:
I personnaly would have installed win98 1st. This will form a base for multi-boot with O/S like Linux/XP/2Kpro.
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Yes, well maybe in a perfect world, but for me that wasn't an option. I already had Xp installed for months and wasn't about to do it all over again and reset everything (I don't know why people keep harping on that, it's not a valid solution). Just decided to bring win98 back for lan support purposes (need win98 to win98 now to support clients). Just so you know, there is a simple enough way to restore the XP boot back without having to worry about reinstalling XP (there ARE specific conditions though, as this link also explains):

see this link: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

Hopethis helps anyone trying to accomplish the same thing.