xp & 98 dual boot question

tman

gave up on my last install of xp, partitioned the hd in 2, then installed xp again.

a few minutes ago i installed 98 on the second partition, it's running perfectly. but there's no way to choose which os to start when you boot the pc.
the only way i can run the other os is by changing the active partition from within windows.

is there a way to get a menu that lets you select which os to run when you first boot?

preferably with xp as the default & it selects that if you dont press anything after 1-2 seconds

(i know i would have been better off installing 98 first, but i wasnt thinking straight at the time, and it's too late to wipe the ntfs part now)

Cake Fiend

Boot to XP, edit c:\boot.ini in notepad (it's hidden by default iirc)

it'll look something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
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


add the line

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98"

to the end and it should let you boot to 98 if you select that option on startup. You might want to change the default timeout as well.

tman

that seems to be what i want, but it gives me an error message about a missing.sys file if i try to load the win98 one, and then it restarts.

98 still works fine if i go to disk managment in xp & change the win98 part to active & then reboot...

spongebob

groups.google.com

Ronan|Raven

Download bootmagic http://www.powerquest.com/ for a trial version afaik, its not very expensive and is damn handy if ya dont want to be arsing about with all sorts.

Dun

Originally posted by tman
(i know i would have been better off installing 98 first, but i wasnt thinking straight at the time, and it's too late to wipe the ntfs part now)

If you haven't done an awful lot of configuration/program installing, you could reinstall XP over itself, and it will detect Win98 and configure both for choosing at boot-time.