How to Multiboot to 98(fat32) or NT(ntfs)?

[cjolley]

What is the best way to multi boot these two systems?
1, They will be on separate drives.
2, They do not need to see each other.
thanks in advance
chuck


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ABit BF6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@3.0, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Acatel 1000 ADSL@1.5mb/sec, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[KaosDG]

Easiest would be to get a hold of OS/2 Boot Manager, or something similar.
(Any others, anyone?)

This installs in a small partition on your Hard drive and presents you with a menu so you can choose an OS to boot.
(really, any OS, not just win9x/NT)

[Larry]

Actually, just install Win98 first, onto you C: drive. Then install WinNT/2k onto another drive, and it will modify the MBR to give you a bootup menu. You don't need any 3rd party software..

Larry

[The Rock]

What Larry said. That's what Im doing with 2000 and 98 and it works great. You only need a boot manager if you go crazy and run 4 or 5 OSes.

The Rock

[cjolley]

Cool, thanks guys!
chuck

[KvHagedorn]

You can run as many operating systems as you have hard disks if you get SCA scsi drives and slip in whichever one you want =P That's why i got the case i did.. of course, as gurm said, you are limited to files on that drive unless your op system can read from the other file system.

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Kind Regards,

KvH

[cjolley]

Ok,Gurm. So whats a primative screwhead to do?
chuck

[Larry]

Gurm. Of course it works!! The trick is to have both the Win2k partition and the Windows98 partition start out at Fat32, install Win98, and then during the Win2k install, choose to format that second partition to NTFS. Works like a charm!

An even easier way would be to use FAT32 on both OSes, but who in their right minds would want to do that?

Larry

[This message has been edited by Larry (edited 19 January 2000).]

[KaosDG]

Larry, From a technical standpoint that won't work... as some windows apps will corrupt the filesystems when they try to do a direct write (MS Office comes to mind).

Under Wink2/NT it will try to use NT FAT calls on a non-standard FAT partition, and it will *look* loike it worked but then your Filesystems slowly degrade. (The NT FAT calls differ from Win98's).
in some cases certain apps will see the FAT32 as an NTFS and skr00 it ten ways from sunday.

I've seen a ton of shareware boot utils like this...
heck, i think even lilo will work for it.

[Jammrock]

Win2k supports dual boots using Win98 and FAT32. NT 4.0 will not, safely. The only way to safely run a dual boot in between Win98 w/ FAT32 and NT 4 w/ NTFS is to use a boot manger.

I have used BootMagic that comes with Partition Magic and have not had troubles. Some people like System Commander, I don't really care as long as it works. And yes, Lilo works as well.

If you want to dual boot Win2k and Win98, it is very simple. Install Win98, if not already on, then put the Win2k CD in while you are in Win98. Follow the instructions for setup, but chose a Clean/Fresh install (don't know the verbage for RTM) and go to the advanced options for setup. There you can select an option that will allow to specify what drive to install Win2k to once you are in setup.

Win2k will then automatically create a dual boot for you. When your computer launches you will have a 30 second (you can change this in Win2k) timer and a list of OS's to boot to.

Jammrock

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PIII 450@504, 256 MB RAM, 35 GB total w/ WD Experts, Abit UDMA 66 controller, CL 6x DVD, PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW (my newest toy), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, LinkSys Etherfast 10/100, DSI 56k modem, Addtronics 6896A Case w/ a crap load of fans and Dynmat noise dampening, MAG DX715T monitor.

Hi, my name is Jammrock. I'm a computer phreak and an EverCrack addict.

[Jorden]

It's as Gurm says, Win NT uses FAT16, guys, it won't read FAT32.

Chuck, I tried to install Win98 on one drive and Win NT on a seperate drive, then use a boot manager to get onto either system, but on an IDE system it doesn't work.

Mainly I guess, because only one drive has the ability to be set as Active drive (with the MBR on it), this being the C: drive.

It would work if you partitioned your main hdd into three seperate partitions, one of 2Gb, FAT16, for WinNT startup (and installation files), one of some room for Win98 (and I still don't know if you can set this partition to FAT32 seperately) and leave the rest of the hdd unpartitioned, as you can use NTFS to partition it, once you have a running WinNT/Win98 combo.

If you do it this way, a bootup-menu will come on every time asking you which of the two OS's you'd like to use.

Hope this helps a bit

Jord.

[cjolley]

Thanks all!
The reason I ask is that we will be converting from an Oracle 7.3 database shop to Oracle 8 soon and the guy in the next office decided to install 8 and our financial system (also Oracle) on a drive at home to experiment with. (wow!)

The Oracle DB only runs on NT (we only have 4)and I am sure that he does not want to blow away his FAT32 drive.
My final suggestion was to multi boot the realy safe way and just plug & un-plug HD data cables depending on which system he wants to use.

The problem seems to be NT4, and we have to use it for the DB. A funky solution, but it will work for sure.
Thanks again,
chuck

[Rattledagger]

If you don't have any other boot managers you could use NT4's boot manager.
Make a small fat-16-partition as the first partition, 5MB should be enough, install win98 and nt4 to other partitions.

Another method. If you're using two ide-drives and can turn off one of the ide-channels in bios, you can do this:
win98 on first hd, connected to primary channel.
NT4 on second hd, connected to secondary channel.
CD-drive to secondary channel.
When you shall boot to NT, disable primary ide-channel. To win98, use both channels.

[DentyCracker]

Yesterday I was bored so I decided to triple boot the AMD K6-2 450@500 with Linux, BeOS and Win2K (9x refuses to install on the crappy RAM). Several little POS drives in the machine. ide0 - 1032 MB drive the first 1000 of which are good (rest is absolute gargage). ide1 2.5 GB POS first 139 MB unusable, next 1350 MB good, next 2 MB crap, next 334 MB good, rest garbage. ide2 "AOPEN CRW9420 cum Ricoh RW 7060A" ide3 4GB drive that has given no end of trouble until recently when I realised the problem resided in the first 39 MB. Btw these values were obtained last year during a bout of absolute boredom and amidst much tedium. The best utility to partition drives is BeOS. Just start the install process and choose more options and you get the partition menu. You can put many types of partitions on drives this way, even have multiple primary partitions on one drive, though I think windows doesn't like this.
What I ended up doing was on
ide 0
partition 1....32 MB FAT16 for nt loading
partition 2....904 MB Linux
partition 3....64 MB Linux swap

ide2
partition 1....1350 MB Fat32 (\Winnt etc)
partition 2....334 MB BFS (BeOS)

1. Install BeOS and install bootman
2. Install Win2k (go to sleep and wake up when it finished)
3. Install Mandrake 6.1 (and hope that lilo behaves its damn cheeky self) tell lilo to install itself on the beginning of the linux boot partition

It works !!!
4. Listen to a few mp3s on all 3 OSes
5. Go down to the local pub and drinks a few celebratory beers.
6. Haul your inebriated self into your? bed and promptly nod off
7. Bore the forum members with a humongous post hehehe

THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION, JUST A BORED PRIMITIVE SCREWHEAD'S LAME ATTEMPT TO PASS SOME TIME, SHEESH!!

OK i feel better now that I've de-Slartified this post



[This message has been edited by DentyCracker (edited 25 January 2000).]

[Jammrock]

cjolley,

Well, there is one final option for you...

Partition Magic 5.0 has the ability to convert a FAT32 partition into a FAT 16 partition...or into an NTFS partition. I have yet to use PM5, but they advertise that ability.

If you do any FAT converting I would HIGHLY recommend backing up ALL important data first. With PM5 you could convert the FAT32 to a FAT16 and then run a dual boot with NT4 (using the M$ dual boot built in to NT).

Just an idea...

Jammrock