Multiple os's

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This will be of interest to Kieth!!! I've installed a new hard drive to my pc. I have setup 3 primary partitions on it. 2x5gb for operating systems and 1x10gb for backing up my first hdd. I have xp installed on the first hard drive and all works fine. I have installed 2000 on the first partition of the second drive. I have installed 98 on the second partition of the second drive. When I first installed 2000 it booted up fine. When I first installed 98 it booted up fine but would only boot up 98 whatever partition I set as active so I reinstalled 2000. Then I could only boot up 2000. Now I've reinstalled xp on the first drive and I can now choose on bootup either xp or 2000 but I can't boot 98 regardless of if I disable the first drive in cmos or which partition of the second drive is active. Also I have been into computer management and set the startup and recovery file manually to say multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98".
Can anyone please advise me on how I can get all 3 os's bootable? Sorry its a bit long winded but you needed to know the background to be able to help. Thanks.

 

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I don't know exactly what's causing your problems at the moment but I believe that you wouldn't have had these problems if you'd installed Win98 first, then the others.

 

ok,thanks. But if I disabled my first hdd drive in cmos(the one with xp on it) then when I reinstalled the other two then they wouldn't affect the first drive then would they? I'm following your thinking. Thanks.

 

Hi, and welcome to the forum

I agree with AndyL in that when you dual boot you have to install the oldest OS first, other wise you have to do alot of messing around with the boot.ini files and the like, I wouldn't like to say yes or no to the question about the reinstall affecting you first hard drive, what i would advise is backup th firt drive first onto CD or maybe take an mage of it using 'ghost' then give the reinstall a try, also be aware that if you are installing Win98 the drive MUST be formatted to Fat32 as win98 can't read an NTFS drive.

Hope this helps, keep us informed of how it goes

 

Ok,thanks. I'll give it a try.

 

Ok, I've now got them all installed ok. To run xp or 2k I just boot up and select which one I want. To boot 98 I disable the first hdd in cmos then it boots straight to 98(possibly because that is set as the active partition). So I'm now happy as I can boot all 3 os's. Now though I have a problem with my display adapter in 98. I just want to play Tiger woods 2000 which has to be run on 98 but needs 256 colours. Whatever I do with the drivers I can't get it to display more than 16 colours and so can't play the game which is odd considering that when I had only 98 installed I could choose High colour and change the resolution to what I wanted. I wonder if anybody can help with this problem?

 

Sixteen colours and a screen resoulution that can't be changed (620 X 480?) indicates an incorrect video driver. Perhaps your original driver has been deleted in all the re-installing or is located on the HDD you disable to get to 98?

 

Find out what make your video card is and check out there web site for the latest driver.

 

try http://www.driverguide.com/ to find most drivers (registration needed)

 

Sorted! Thanks everyone for your help!

 

Glad to be of service

:multi

 

Could you not run Tiger Woods on XP in compatability mode?

 

Not sure what that is? I've not had xp long. I'll look into it.