Major Screwup... XP install and getting back to 98

Okay, I decided I'd stop being a stick-in the mud and install XP. I should've kept to my convictions about evil Microsoft. Now I can't get back to my 98 partition.

I have two disk drives, one is 30gb, the other is 6gb. I have Windows 98 on the 30gb drive, and recently reformatted the 6gb drive for NTFS and installed XP on that drive. Now I'm going through boot weirdness, which I've always had a mental block with...

I can boot to XP, but when I get the boot screen it doesn't detect or show the Windows 98 drive and partition. Even in XP, "c:" drive refers to my win98 drive, whereas all the XP stuff should be in f:\windows... (The 30gb drive is in two partitions, C: and D:...)

When I pull out the XP drive, I get my XOSL bootloaded, but tryin to boot 98 tells me NTLDR not found...

So here's what my boot.ini file in XP looked like:

Quote:

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[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

---

None of the following lines will work, they tell me that hal.dll is invalid.

Quote:

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multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98?"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98??"

---

Anyway... I can't help but shake the feeling that Microsoft screwed up (again) and installed Windows XP files over my Windows 98 directory on the wrong disk... Can anyone enlighten me? I can't seem to find the answer on the net, at least not reliably.

sounds like win 98 doesn't like being dual booted with another drive with NTFS on it, i know someone who did exactly the same thing as you have done and left everything in FAT format, only other diff is that he has 1 drive split into 2 partitions and not 2 seperate drives

sounds like win '98 is trying to use some form of NT filesystem or bootloader that it doesn't like or as you said has put XP boot files over your 98 files, since your '98 drive was likely to be named C: at one stage when you formatted the other drive ready to install XP, XP has probably seen your '98 drive as the drive it's being installed too for some part of the install

you could probably re-install '98 after removing XP and you could put both your O/S's on one drive split into 2 partitions formatted with fat32 and use the larger 30 gig drive for all your files and such

also, you've probly tried this already, but have you tried booting '98 from a boot disk after fiddling with the boot sequence (ie making '98 your primary boot after a: drive?), then after that theres always the option of trying a system repair / restore using your XP cd?

hope some of this may be of useful help...

Well, I've sort of fixed it, largely by ignoring the problem. Took the win98 disk, reinstalled win98 over my previous win98 installation. My old bootloader is gone, but everything is pretty much back to pre-XP-ness.

My main piss-off was that XP felt it had to muck around with my primary disk when I wanted to just do a basic install of it somewhere else... This time I'm going to do it with my larger drive physically disconnected, and see if I can get to setup via CD rom booting or something (which seems to be a hit-miss proposition on my machine for some obscure reason.)

Thanks for the help, I am in the process of thanking the patron saint of technology as well as other relevant theological entities of various groups.

I do not know about dual boot but I find that
every program I have that runs on 98 will work
on XP.... Even 2000 cannot say that....

So my question... Why Dual Boot 98 and XP ???

I wanted to experiment with XP on a short term basis, with the option to return to Windows 98 to do my real work or play without worrying about different setups and program screwups.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Highlander
I do not know about dual boot but I find that
every program I have that runs on 98 will work
on XP.... Even 2000 cannot say that....

So my question... Why Dual Boot 98 and XP ???

---

HMMMMM....and what majick did you work? I have tried that and have had to reinstall xp about 9 times before I got a good stable installation. I have to be really careful what i install too....If its not made for xp, I crash and burn. :(

Well, part of the system requirements for XP must include a magic 8-ball for troubleshooting. :) I really don't know, I just started 'er up, reformatted my 6gb drive into a single NTFS partition, and let it rip. :/ The install process was easy, and getting it running as a clean install was no problem, I'm just pissed at the secondary effects to my computer's setup. Other than not being able to boot Windows 98, everything was peachy, really. Sound, video, network all worked from the start. (Que Magnifico!)

This...

Quote:

---

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW
S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

---

Says Windows XP is loading from the first HD....

I believe this...

Quote:

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multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINDOWS

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says that 98 is trying to boot from the second hard drive...
If you pulled out the XP HD then the line should read this...

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINDOWS

Because with the XP HD missing this is now the first HD
At least that's what I remember...

Greg