Dual boot

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by Lemming3k, Apr 10, 2006.

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  1. Lemming3k Insanity Gone Mad Registered Senior Member

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    This might get a little complicated, but i've been trying to get a dual boot system working for ages, with windows 98 and windows xp, i have two HD's, a 20 gig with windows 98 on it, and an 80 gig with xp, (i know this as i've disconnected each one in turn and loaded the comp up) but when i start up the computer with both HD's connected it gives me the choice on startup(where i expect it to say windows 98 and xp) of windows xp, or windows xp, which is quite confusing since one won't load when i click as it isnt xp thats installed there.
    Has anyone had this problem and does anyone know any solutions?
     
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  3. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    You'd need the 98 on Drive C:
    The XP could go on any drive, since it uses a bootLoader.

    One problem with dual boots is "Security", simple 98 is your weaklink, it potentially opens your dual system to exploitation.
     
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  5. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    use fdisk to find out which drive has the c drive
    it will be on drive zero in fdisk

    edit
    i used to have two os's on my system but they were on the same boot partition

    i installed winme then i installed win2000 pro
     
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  7. Lemming3k Insanity Gone Mad Registered Senior Member

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    I actually didnt know 98 had to be on C, but by some fluke it is.

    I think i have plenty of those as it is.

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  8. Lemming3k Insanity Gone Mad Registered Senior Member

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    Well, im taking a course on computers so i know vaguely what im doing, i know 98 needs to go on first when using one HD and it must be partitioned by fdisk.(come to think of it that would generally make it drive C and makes my earlier comment to stryder about not knowing rather stupid of me!) I was told that if i removed my second HD(80 gig one with xp) and removed the partition on the first HD, i could then put 98 on it and then put the second HD back in and it would work as a dual boot, perhaps i didnt remove everything properly and thats why it gives me the choice of xp or xp, since individually they work perfectly.
     
  9. Vasilidante Registered Senior Member

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    something worth considering is dual booting xp with Fedora. fedora is linux based so youll learn more, win98 is really a dead end.
     
  10. Lemming3k Insanity Gone Mad Registered Senior Member

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    I hadnt considered a boot with anything other than 98 and xp, since i've never used linux before i didnt want to risk it, also i merely want 98 for its dos function as some programmes refuse to work on xp even with dos emulator so i wanted to experiment if they would work on 98(which they should).
     
  11. domesticated om Stickler for details Valued Senior Member

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    Just out of curiosity, why do you need windows 98 at all? Why not just make a single boot XP system?
     
  12. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    As Lemming mentioned he was after some of the DOS functions, however he could easy get hold of DR-DOS or even a copy of MS-DOS (might need a floppy drive), although saying that if you are retrogaming you might want to check out QUEMM which manages your driver loading and can increase your free memory for running games to over a whole 512k !!!

    Most of the problems nowadays with the old DOS games is that the new fangled graphics/sound cards don't have specifically written drivers, so you have to deal with emulating other cards which creates glitches, also DOS games tend to run a bit faster.
     
  13. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    lemming
    why not just use a boot disk for you dos based programs?

    if you boot to windows and then use the run box or start menu dos link you are not in true dos
     
  14. Singularity Banned Banned

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    U have two harddisk , so put two OS , one on each.

    U can change boot sequence in CMOS
     
  15. Lemming3k Insanity Gone Mad Registered Senior Member

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    Thats exactly what i have done, the problem comes when i bootup, i should get the option of which harddisk i want to load from (xp or 98) but the options i get are xp or xp, and im not sure why. Meaning i cant get into my 98 harddrive without removing the other, unless im missing something.
    That would be a good thing to try, i'll have a look.
    If i understand correctly i would have to create one, i have tried this and for some reason it didnt work.
    Well in 98 it didnt matter, dos was a part of it so everything still worked, in xp however there is no dos, so not everything works.
    Never heard of it, i'll look it up.
    Yes, i've had quite a few working, and quite a few working but they are too slow, which i cant find a fix for as everything talks of them being too fast(understandably).
    Others however continue to be a pain in the ass like me, i think computers take after their owners.

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  16. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    one reason NOT to use a boot disk

    if you shell out of windows to dos then all of your drivers are loaded
    but if you use a boot disk then all of your drivers must be loaded and configured by autoexec.bat and config.sys
    and as stryder has mentioned most if not all of todays graphic cards do not have dos drivers the same can probably be said about sound cards
     
  17. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    lemming
    he mispelled it, it's qemm and it's a memory manager
     
  18. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    You should invest in the latest versions of Partition Magic and Drive Image. Each costs about $60 American.

    Partition Magic can resize and move partitions without losiing data, but it cannot change their sequence on a hard disk. Drive Image can create compressed backup copies of partitions. With both, you can setup whatever arrangement you want for a multi-OS system. Drive Image7 comes with two CD's, one for installation in NTFS systems like XP, one for FAT systems like Windows 98.

    Partition Magic includes a utility called Boot Magic, which copes very well with multi-OS systems. the only draw back is that it requires being installed in a FAT 32 or FAt 16 partition. I installed it in a Windows 98 partition and am running two versions of XP, Windows 98, & DOS/Win3.11. It is fun to fool with this type of system.

    BTW: I have 12 partitions scattered over three physical hard disks. I find this much more convenient than having a large number of files in one huge partition on each disk.

    When installed, Boot Magic finds all the partitions containg operating systems and sets up a master boot record which provides a startup menu giving you a choice of OS. When you put more than OS on a physical drive, any partition containg an inactive OS must be "Hidden" and the one contaiing the active OS must be "Unhidden." Boot Magic handles the hiding and unhiding as required.

    DOS cannot handle modern graphics controllers. I have been considering getting an old ISA graphics card for an obsolete system I still fool with. I still have a lot of very interesting DOS software, which cannot use their full graphics capabilities.

    The Partition Magic CD is bootable, which is a must for this type of product and a system with more than one OS. Booting from the PM CD allows for fixing various problems caused by tinkering with Multi-OS ssytems.

    The XP install CD has a recovery environment which is also handy for saving a tinkerer when he makes a mistake. I once deleted a partition containing an OS I no longer wanted. It seems that XP has a boot.ini file with partititon numbers used when loading XP. Those numbers were invalid and XP would not boot. I had to use the recovery environment (similar to Command Line DOS) to fix the boot.ini file.

    If you do not have an adventurous twist to your personality, do not fool with a Multi-OS system once you get it working. Your life will become interesting in ways you might not enjoy if you do not like technical challenges.
     
  19. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    If you're still looking for the DOS functionality, without needing Windows 98 or lower, consider the open source project DOSBox:

    http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

    The new release is quite good.

    -AntonK
     
  20. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    {b]AntonK:[/b] Thanx for the link. I have downloaded DOSBox & will try it.

    I suspect that I might need a motherboard with at least one ISA slot and an ancient graphics controler. Several very good DOS Graphic-oriented programs provide a list of high end (as of 10-15 years ago) graphics control cards and ask you to pick the one you use. Some of those cards used propritory drivers which are unlikely to be emulated by DOSBox. I hope DOSBox provides support for some such card, but do not expect it to be that good.
     
  21. jomaster Registered Member

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    open working station, to go in tools, option of files, posting,
    to post the files and hidden files to open the file boot.ini
    which this finds on the root of C:

    if the hdd win98 is master and xp slave

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN="Windows 98" /fastdetect
    multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows XP" /fastdetect

    or if the hdd xp is master and 98 slave

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINnt
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows XP" /fastdetect
    multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN="Windows 98" /fastdetect

    or buy Partition Magic
     
  22. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Partition Magic with Boot Magic included is lots of fun, even if you are not gung ho for a muliple OS system.

    It is handy to have your OS and all the installed software in one partition, with data files in another, preferabley on a seond hard disk.

    If you have a lot of software installed, it is great to run both the old and the new OS when a new OS comes out.

    When I replaced my last system which had Windows 98 SE, I made an image of my Windows 98 partition and put a copy on the first hard disk of the new system. I installed Win-XP in another partition. I was able to run all my old software via Win98SE until I installed the programs to run under XP.

    For me, this is a big help since I have about 70-80 applications installed. I did not have to be in ahurry to install every application.
     
  23. Singularity Banned Banned

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    I heard that "Core 2 Duo" uses shared L2 Cache. So what happened to cache coherence ?


    and why is C2D 1.8 Ghz without HT equals to performance of 3Ghz P4.

    Someone should sue Intel for cheating us all these years and
    get compensation of free new processors.
     
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