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NT loader/boot magic won't work right!!

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by millesca 1 view

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I partitioned my system with partition magic to install WIN NT on win98 system. Now there are 2 primary paritions, NT(2GB) and Win98 (17GB). Install was ok. I updated the vga card driver, after this win98 would not go passed the logo. After trying different approaches, I restored the registry from the day BEFORE installing NT and everything seems ok,both OS'seem to work fine....except I have tried to use bootmagic to manage the OS' but it doesn't work. At first on the bootmagic screen, I would point and click to one OS and it would highlight the other and boot to the highlighted one. I tried to uninstall and reinstall bootmagic. Doesn't work. I just get the "starting bootmagic" line and instantly jumps to the default OS. The onlyway I could boot to either os is to make it the default in bootmagic. I've tried to use NT loader but it will not boot to win98.... states "unrecognized operating sys. on C" as an option and when I select it...it just brings me to a black screen with a cursor. I tried to repair NT by having it inspect boot sect...maybe it would detect win98....but same message displays on the loader.

Also, both OS' state hard drive as C. Windows98 has c:hard disk d:cd-rw and r:dvd rom. NT has c:hard disk, d:dvd rom and e:cd-rw both have a:floppy. Is that OK? I'm not sure. Partition Magic doesn't list the NT partition with a letter just a "*".

I'm thinking of formatting the NT partition or deleting it with magic and starting by installing NT again...scared that win98 won't boot though. I understand that all boot info is stored on the 1st partition of the disk which is where NT is. Any ideas would be appreciated. I much rather avoid formatting the entire hard drive and starting from scratch. Thanks

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by #1tech

Sounds to me millesca that BootMagic has marked the NT (NTFS) partition as Hidden. That explains the reason both OSes, state they are drive C. You could try unhiding the NT partition in BootMagic, however I would backup the drive before attempting this, then try rebooting. You could also delete the NT partition with PartitionMagic then move the Win98 partition to the front of the drive then reinstall NT. It's a trial and error thing, but always remember and practice this, ALWAYS BACKUP THE DRIVE BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY OF THESE OR OTHER SUGGESTIONS!!! I cannot stress enough the importance of the last statement. Let me know how it turns out.

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