Dual Boot Question

[KurtD]

I have been fortunate enough to be the recipient of a free Win2000 license (legal). I currently run Win98SE on a 20GB hard drive and want to load the Win2000 on a new 40GB hard drive in a dual boot. I have no experience with Win2000 or the dual boot configuration.

1. Is there a good place to go with guidance on how to do this since I've never done it before?
2. Will I be able to access the Win98 drive and data from Win2000? It's formatted FAT32.
3. Are there any "helper" applications that would make this easier? I don't mind parting with a few extra $ if it will make this a less stressful project.

My ultimate plan is to migrate my apps over to the Win2000 drive. I have a few games I'm not sure will run, but if they do I will eventually move everything over to the Win2000 drive and re-format the old 20GB for use by the Win2000 drive.

 

[rb56]

A dual boot should be pretty straight forward. I would make sure I had all of the drivers that I needed for W2K in a folder and ready to install when asked for them. . You can save them on the W98 drive if you want, you'll be able to access them when you need them. I would also check that all my hardware will run with W2K first. Then simply boot W2K, insert the cd and double click setup if it doesn't auto play and follow the prompts. It will ask where you want to install it, choose the 40GB drive format it and install the drivers when asked.

Edit: you might want to download OS updates first also, that way you can do everything at one time

rb56

 

[renorocks]

It's actually pretty easy to set up a dual boot with win98 & 2k. The easiest way to get step by step instructions is purchasing a win2k book at your local computer store, or the otherwise worthless manual that comes with the win2k disk. When installing win2k it will create a "boot.ini" file in the root directory of your win98 partition. This file controls the dual boot process, after installation you can modify the file to shorten the time it gives you to choose your o.s. on boot up (default is 30 sec.), 5 seconds is usually eneough.
Even though it is really a simple process, I would definately back up your data first and even make an image of your win98 partition just in case of user error or computer glitch.

You can see your win98 partition when booting to 2k, but you cannot see your 2k partition when booting to win98. This is assuming your Win2k partition is NTFS, if you go FAT32 on your win2k partition you can see both ways. NTFS is a far superior file system for stability and speed, I highly reccommend it on 2k. NTFS also gives you the added security options in Win2k whereas FAT32 does not.

good luck

 

[KurtD]

Thanks for the replies. I am treasurer for my Church, and they are going to Win2k. Since I do most of my work for the Church on my PC at home, they bought me the license when they decided to upgrade (they get cheap prices directly from MS since they are a non-profit). There are actually 2 CDs, one is the Win2k and the other is the latest SP. I think all my hardware will be OK except just not sure about the DSL modem. The XP upgrade advisor identifies that as my only potential problem for XP as a driver issue (which is where we will eventually go - the Win2K was provided free in lieu of XP until the media/license is available under the MS program - or something like that). I suspected that the NTFS would be the way to go, which is why I want to eventually migrate all my apps to Win2k. I'm relieved Win2k can read my Win98 disks/partitions! I was worried about moving the data around once I loaded all the programs into Win2k.

Thanks again, I'm relieved to find out this is not as big a deal as I thought. Now all I have to do is figure out is how to use Norton to image my data......

Kurt