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98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

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98 and 2000pro dual boot problem
My machine is setup with two drives divided into multiple partitions by Partition Magic. The drives are on a RAID IDE bus but just using the RAID busses as extra IDE ports, no RAID configurtion. I was running 98se and installed 2000pro as a second OS. Everything worked great. After some problems with 98, I reinstalled 98 over itself. Finally everything is working again in 98 but there is no longer a dual boot selection when I start up. I cannot boot into 2000.

I tried “repair’ from the 2000 CD, but it said it could not repair that I would have to run setup. I also tried the 4 2000 boot and repair floppies, but the result was the same as the CD.

In my root drive is a boot.ini file as follows:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=30
Default=C:\

[Operating Systems]
C:\=”Microsoft Windows 98″
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(8)\WINNT=”Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional” /fastdetect

ntdetect.com and ntldr are also there.

How can I regain my dual boot without reloading 2000? Any help greatly appreciated.

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Reply To: 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

In reply to 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

If there is a way, I would like to know also. When I was teaching IT (pc building), I would teach my students how to partition and install multiple operating systems. I find that you need to install 98 and then NT/XP. The later of the OS’s creates a boot loader and writes special instructions to the master boot record (MBR). When you reinstalled WIN98, the OS recorded a new MBR and DBR and that is why the dual boot was removed. It does not matter wether or not you have the boot.ini or ntdetect.com, etc. The MBR looks for certain files like those, but now WIN98 would not be looking for these files. WIN98 would only look for IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM – nothing else. My suggestion is to reinstall 2000, created another extended partition and create an image file (Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image Pro) and save the image to the new extended partition.

Reply To: 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

In reply to 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

The question has now changed, but I will still award points to anyone who can help me get up and running.

I booted 98SE, loaded the 2000 CD and started setup as it would not let me start repair. At the first reboot, I had three choices, 98SE, 2000 pro or 2000 pro setup. Apparently setup had repaired the boot area and it was now seeing what was in my original dual boot as well as the setup boot.

I tried booting into 2000 and got an error saying to hit F8 for troubleshooting (which did not work) and saying it could not find ntoskrnl.exe.

I modded the boot.ini file to:

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=15
Default=C:\
[Operating Systems]
C:\=”Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition”
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(8)\WINNT=”Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional”

and tried again. Same results. Ntoskrnl.exe is in the winnt\system32 folder where it should be. I modded the boot.ini several different ways to be sure it was looking in the proper partition and found that it was although the error stated something to the effect that the file could not be found in (Windows 2000 Root)\system32\ . I don’t know if this is an indication that it is looking anywhere other than the winnt folder or not.

Just from curiosity, I went into “my computer” in 98, navigated to the winnt directory on the other drive, and double clicked ntoskrnl.exe. I got the following error which I do not know if it is caused by trying it from 98 or if it says something about the file:

The J:\winnt\system32\ntoskrnl.exe file is improperly linked with alignment less than 0x1000. Fix the error and then link it again.

As I said, although the original question is now moot, I will still award the points for help in getting everything working properly. Thank you all for your help.

Reply To: 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

In reply to 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

All answers have been tried with no success. I finally booted into 98, ran 2000 setup as I could not access repair, went through the setup process til it was ready to reboot. Then I modified the boot file, and started up in 2000 rather than 2000 setup. Had to do a little fixing up, but everything is working now. Sorry, but no points awarded as no working answers were given. BTW, hope this helps you out.

Reply To: 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

In reply to 98 and 2000pro dual boot problem

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