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  • #2080668

    Dual Boot

    Locked

    by jdismuke ·

    I have Win98 on my primary hard drive and I also have a second hard drive set as slave. I would like to know how to setup Winnt workstation on the second hard drive. I have tried this with fat and ntfs partitions with no luck. Winnt keeps tellingme there is an incompatible partition and it can not be installed. If anyone can help that would be really great thanks.

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    • #3893226

      Dual Boot

      by kevin_b ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      Sounds like the primary disk is fat32 which nt won’t recognize. In order to boot up, nt has to have files on the system partition (the partition that the pc boots from.) If the primary disk is fat32, nt can’t put the files there and it tells youit can’t be installed. If you want to dual boot, you have to create a fat partition.

    • #3893225

      Dual Boot

      by phinaddict ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      Boot to dos and do an fdisk on your slave drive. From there you should just be able to run your NT setup and it will show your slave drive as new unformatted and should allow you to install to what you need.

    • #3893214

      Dual Boot

      by inspectorclave ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      To further emphasize answer #1, the “C” drive must be FAT, not FAT32. NT only recognizes FAT (which is FAT16) and NTFS for file systems. Win98, by default, uses FAT32. The only way around this without destroying data is to possibly use a program called Partition Magic.

    • #3893165

      Dual Boot

      by joshg ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      Your going to need a small DOS partition on the master hard drive. If you are concerned about space only give it 200MB or less. NT won’t read the FAT32 of WIN98, it needs to load the boot loader to the Active partition. You can get around this byrunning FDISK each time you want to run NT. Boot normally and ecscape to DOS run FDISK and set the slave drive to be the active partition. Reboot the install NT. You will have to set the active partition each time you want to run windows. Not the best way, but it works

    • #3893154

      Dual Boot

      by koan me ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      Easy to do, my friend. The first (primary) partition of the first HD should be FAT and should be less than 2 GB. (I personally use a smaller one because I don’t install any Apps on the C Drive.) This partition is where Win9X should be installed. After Win9X is up and running, install NT on a partition on the 2nd hard drive. (I prefer to use a tiny 8 MB unformated primary partition, and an extended partition with big logical partitions). Feel free to use FAT or NTFS during the NT install (NTFS will NOT be visible when you are booted to Win9X).

      In the end, the first partition of the first HD will contain Win9X and also the files that boot WinNT (called the “system partition”). The second HD will contain the actual install of NT (called the “boot partition”).

      When you boot, WinNT will handle the boot process and give you the option of booting WinNT, WinNT with basic video, or Win9X.

      Good Luck!

    • #3893151

      Dual Boot

      by iank ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      If you don’t want to wipe out your existing install (which sounds like fat32) remove your primary drive and install NT on the secondary (make it a primary temporarily) create an NT boot floppy and redirect it to the second hard drive. Install the original back.
      This can be a bit of a hassle but it works. When you want to boot nt insert the disk otherwise 98 will boot normally

    • #3895436

      Dual Boot

      by merlinmg ·

      In reply to Dual Boot

      All operating systems use C: as the default boot drive. If your orginal drive was partitioned in FAT 32 WIN NT won’t recognize the drive and abort the setup. You’ll need to refdisk and set partition to fat 16, so select no for large disk support.Reinstall WIN 98 then install WIN NT on the other drive. This should take care of the issue.

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