I have just installed a CMD UATA 100 RAID card into my computer. Everything goes fine and the RAID Bios was able to detect both of my HDD (2X Seagate U10 10GB 5400rpm). I used striped mode for my HDDs.

After that, I partitioned my HDDs into four partitions :
c: WIN XP
d: WIN 98
e: GAMES
f: DOWNLOADS

I installed Windows 98 in the WIN 98 partition and everything goes fine.

I have set my boot order to boot from CD-ROM so that I can installed from DOS but the CD-ROM couldn't detect the disc and I could not install Win XP from DOS(clean install). I received an error that says the the CD-ROM couldn't load a file. Is it because of the RAID ? I have tried installing XP from DOS before and I didn't face any problem.

So, I installed Win XP from Win 98 using NEW INSTALLATION. I formatted my WIN XP partition to NTFS and sucessfully installed XP. When I start my PC, I can choose whether to load Win XP or Win 98, I can start Windows XP but couldn't start Win 98.

I tried to change the BOOT.INI file in XP but I still couldn't start Win 98. I suspect that Win XP has erased my Master Boot Record (MBR). How can I fix this problem ? I could do a clean install of Win XP from DOS. There is no option to create a startup disk for Win XP and I have to install Win XP from Win 98.

How can I change my BOOT.INI file ? What commands I should put inside there ? Let's say the XP partition is C: and Win 98 partition is D: and I'm using RAID. Shouldn't it be like this :

multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS "MS Win XP Pro" \fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS "MS Win 98 SE" \fastdetect

Note:
* I installed both the OS in the "WINDOWS" folder in each partition.
* I'm using Striped mode for RAID.
* I have updated my XP to SP1.

I am not 100% sure but I believe that Windows 98 has to be on the first partition of you hard drive, before any other operating systems.

-Scott

Actually, the reason why I installed Win 98 on the second partitionis because I want to install XP on the primary partition.

Win XP is more important than any other OS.

People adviced me to install Win 98 first because Win XP will automatically create a boot manager for both the OSes.

This is quite easy. And it doesn't have anything to do with raid .

When you installed Windows 98 on D:, there was no NTFS partition (yet). Everything in the register etc was set on locations on D:.
Then you installed WinXP. You formatted C: to be NTFS. As Windows 98 can't access NTFS (without patching) it is impossible for 98 to see the C:, so the D: is automatically renamed to D:. This means that all references in the register etc are wrong (they are pointing to D:, while everything seems to be on C: all of a sudden).

So what can you do about this?
1. Install WinXP on C: as a FAT32 partition
2. Install 98 on C: and XP on D: as NTFS
3. Try to patch Win98 that it can read NTFS (google helps here), maybe that works (although I seriously doubt that.).

Good luck!

Shouldn't I install Win XP on the main partition ? Win Xp is more important.

The problem is, I can't do a clean install of XP from DOS. I have to install from Win 98.

XP can run fine on every drive from C to Z!

Why do you need to install from 98? XP can normally installed from dos (/i386/winnt.exe)

Windows 98 MUST be on the first partition unless you use Windows XP with FAT32 filesystem. It's easier to just install XP on D:\, works fine. If you use XP FAT32, Windows 98 places a couple files in the C:\ directory which point it to D:\, and it obviously can't do that it you use NTFS csince it's can't read that FS.

Not true!

Win98 needs to boot from the primary ACTIVE partition.

If you feel like getting fancy, create a few secondary partitions before the primary partition.
Please keep in mind that win98/se have issues addressing more than 64GB in a single partition due to old 16bit code that is still part of the win98 kernel. (patch available, but only useful once it's working)


Try:
1st (secondary partition) for swap, approx 1024MB for Virutal Ram and format FAT16 if possible.
2nd (secondary/primary partition) for Winxp, make size you want. Format NTFS.
3rd for win98. Make this the primary partition and the active partition (of course). This partition will become c: regardless of the others, Format Fat32

Why would you need to do a clean install from dos. Just boot from winxp cd and quick format the partition or install winxp to the default directory /winnt instead of /windows.
You can delete the previous version of windows (and it will be faster) from inside winXP when it's up and running.

Debro: you can install Win98 on every drive you want, as long as all the higher drives (win98 on e:, zo c: and d: are higher) are on a FAT filesystem. For long time, I had 98 running on g:

As debro stated It doesn't matter how many FAT/FAT32 logical partitions you have so long as 98 is installed on the active primary partition. So far as dual boots are concerned install 98 first and then do a clean install of XP to whatever partition you want to. So that XP will handle the boot.ini. If you want to be able to read NTFS in 98 you will need a program like NTFS for Win98.

My F: was a logical partition.... nothing primary and active there!

98 does write its bootfiles on the primary active partition however!

Yes you can. But when you install an NTFS OS/linux on the primary partition, win98 tends to have a good whinge, or worse screw over the partition or demand that you reformat the primary partition as FAT32. C: is always the active (usually primary) partition, and I'm pretty sure that win9x doesn't like having a secondary partition marked as the active partition.

Better to just make the primary partition the partition you install win98 to in the first place!

Of course you can have as many fat32 logical drives as you want, but it makes no sense to have winxp installed on a fat32 drive as it slows down the filesystem dramatically as more files are added to the drive. NTFS is slightly slower on a clean install, but quickly overtakes FAT32 once the drive begins to be filled. As well, it supports user owned files, etc, not that many home users want this.

I always make sure that my C: (win2k) is on FAT32. I know there is a slight difference in performance, but it's got its advantages as well. It happened once to me that my Windows was really messed up and I could not access my C: anymore... all I could do was format the drive. So there went all my documents and stuff.

With FAT32 I'm abled to access my harddisk from DOS. OK nowadays I've got a NTFS bootdisk... but I still hang on to FAT32!

My thesis supervisor once told me that if it doesn't exist on at least 3 different media then a file doesn't exist.

If it's important, back it up often.

Unfortunately it happens to the best of us.

I recently lost 5GB of downloads, my resume and my thesis project when when I decided to upgrade an installation of win98 to 98se. It repartitioned my 160GB raid array to 2 80GB partitions wiping out everything, including a 6 month old installation on winxp, despite recognising the primary partition (logically being the partition it was to be installed on) correctly.

(I am yet to figure out how it repartitioned to 2 80GB partitions without prompting)

Luckily all the important stuff (resume and thesis project) had been backed up on a (obscure) cd and online.

The 5GB of MP3/programs/coolstuff though is virtually irreplaceable, being almost my entire downloads (on 56K) for the year!

Noooo!!!!!!!

I have an old 13GB HD which is the "My documents" folder.
With a little registry hacking, or a tweaking program you can get winxp to send all documents to a different (fat32 formatted) HD for permanent storage.

Keep in mind that it still needs to be duplicated at least to cd or main HD's for security.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I installed my Win 98 SE on C: FAT32 and
XP SP1 on D: NTFS

I also found out that my PCI cards had conflicts with each other. That's the reason I failed to start the Win XP setup.

I had to remove my Ethernet card in order to start the Win XP setup. Now, everything is working fine and I can use my Ethernet card.

Interesting. I had the same problem when I installed win2k on a celeron 300/256MB, intel chipset and WinXP on an AMD1800/256MBpc2700.

The installer wouldn't work unless the network card was removed!

Problem with all NT based OS's or just coincidence?

Coincidence methinks.

I have Nt4, 2000 and XP and I have never ever had to remove my network card to install them.

Mine were both based on realtek 8139 chips so, maybe realtek newtwork chips have issues with via chipsets, or the other way around.

I am using a Dlink 538TX Network card with an Intel chipset mobo. Maybe there is a conflict between this three things. Anyway, I am glad that I have installed my Win XP.

After working in a PC shop for about 7 months I've learnt a few things. One is that I'd never want to buy a dlink network card. WE HAD NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS WITH THEM!

The pcmcia cards were a particularly bad, it stretched across three different models (53xt/53xtx) of network card , and don't get me started about their pcmcia modems.

The PCI network cards weren't very good either, and every 2nd card was returned and swapped for a cheaper netcomm with realtek 8139 chip, which caused much less issues for people. (Mine wasn't conflict free, (nexus/jaycar el-cheapy model)


I don't know what the chips on the dlinks were, but the cards were atrocious. Maybe they demanded stricter voltages, or something, or the driver revision on the cd's weren't stable, but it was mainly detection problems. They just weren't detected 1/2 the time. And if they were, the drivers wouldn't install, or would install but wouldn't work the next time the system started.

I've never had any problems with Realtek 100mbps chips. The 10mbps I have is a bit finnicky (luckily I don't use it for much). Realtek is pretty reliable in my experience, and they're dirt cheap .

I've always used the reference realtek drivers (don't know if other companies include custom drivers for realtek chipset cards). You can get them here

My last few network chips have all been embedded though, got an Intel chipset and a 3com chipset integrated, 2 boards with SiS 900 chips, all work fine.

I've never really had any issues with realtek chips (even their 10Mbps).

I really doutr that the problem is realteks. I suspect it is a microsoft, via or bios thing. Sometimes the actual pci timings might be too low for winxp/2k to recover after an operation, or something so when it actually trys to detect the network cards, it doesn't work.

But the DLINK cards seem to be very prone to this if thats the issue.



Maybe you can try more lenient PCI delays , ie use rocovery times of 32/64 instead of 8/16, at least just when you install.

3Com and Realtek both produce high-quality NICs. The Realteks however, use a little more CPU capacity. They are not really to be used in sslloowww systems (486?). A great point of the 3Com cards is that they can be fully configured (nice feature, if you work with alternate OS'). Some 3Com cards (like the 509B) do often need quite some configurating, before they work like they should Many ppl experience problems with them, without realising that the card should be configured with a 3Com tool.

As I was given a load of 3Com 905B-TX I wouldn't wanna have a 3Com... although the one in my laptop performs great

I love 3com cards , they are the quickest and provide the best platform if you want to burn across the network.

Besides that, I doubt that anyone really runs and 486 anymore (except government agencies), so I seriously doubt anyone would even notice the difference between the 3com and realteks.

Maybe think of realtek as the Win-Nic, but I don't think realtek deserve the bad reputation.

The realteks are great cards and I would recommend them to everyone.

However, if you intend to install a high capacity server, with several NIC's, then cpu cycles are precious and the 3coms will crap all over the realteks.

3com are awsome NIC's, but overpriced.