I have just partitioned my Hard disk running window XP with Partition Majic with aim of run Window 2000 pro concurrently. But I am lost, I don't know what to do next...... I tried to install window 2000 pro while XP was running but the message was that I can't install a lower window version.
I don't know much of what to do. Someone rescue me..

Thanx
Abbey

You need to install Win2K from the CD at boot, not from within WinXP. You specify the partition you want to install it into and the boot menu should be set up automatically. Just be sure not to accept defaults or it will either fail or install over WinXP.

Do you have a free partition to install W2k on? If not your going to have to open up some space and create a partition for it. I'm asking this basic question because I got the impression form your post that you were trying to install W2k on the same partition as XP.

Just be warned that if you install a Win2K dual boot after WinXP has been installed that you may lose the XP boot-loaders and not be able to boot directly into WinXP. You should be able to repair this by then putting in the XP CD and going to the recovery console, where you would run fixboot and then fixmbr at the prompt.

I will be trying this out for real in the next day or so (I'm doing a bit of experimenting you see). Today I installed WinME in place of Win2K on C: on what had been a dual boot Win2K/WinXP setup. At the moment there is of course no multiboot option since boot.ini was wiped along with the rest of C: when it was formatted. However I took the precaution of copying boot.ini ntdetect.com and ntldr onto a floppy (and tested that it worked OK before formatting) so I am still able to boot to XP from that floppy diskette until I work out how to fix the bootloaders.

BTW Abbey, similar thoughts as setoguro, could you outline exactly how you have partitioned your drive, what formatting and presumably XP is on C: ?

Theoretically anyway, you should be able to put both oses on the same partition, though not recommended. XP system would be in Windows and the root and 2K would be in WinNT and the root as well. More problematic is that both would share the Program Files.

I wonder if I could ask a related question. I have a PC with 2 hard drives with Windows XP installed on my primary drive. I wish to have Windows 98 installed on my 2nd Hard and to be able to chose my operating system at the time of boot up. My disk file system is NTFS. I would appreciate help on how to accomplish this. Thanks

There are a variety of ways (both hardware and software) to attempt this but that configuration is one of the more difficult ones (mixed file systems, xp already on C and the oses on two drives) - and not one I have tried-out yet myself. It is very easy to install WinXP on any partition after Win9x as a dual boot though.

A boot utility such as boot chooser or pqboot would be one alternative but you will still have the problem of installing Win98, which is easiest and best on the C: drive, but which also "corrupts" the WinXP boot-loaders in the process.

Would highly recommend that you backup your current partition(s) using Norton Ghost or PQ Drive Image before doing anything, so you can get back to where you are now. Failing that do back-up any important personal data files.

I would ensure to copy boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com onto a formatted floppy and then check that it works by booting to the floppy. You will also need a WinXP installation CD and the product key if you later need to repair the WinXP installation as well as an install disk for Win98, a Win9x boot diskette and (although you can use fdisk) a partition manager such as Partition Magic.

The following might be easiest if you dont want to clean install your version of XP (though that is recommended and much the easiest route). Put in the slave on it's own but now jumpered as master and create and format a primary FAT partition for it at the start of the drive and install Win98 onto it. Add the current master as slave and set your bios so they will boot from a cd rom. Insert the XP CD and reboot to it. Choose Repair from Recovery Console and then select your only XP installation using the number 1. At the prompt enter fixboot and then exit. If you cannot then boot to the oses, first check that the new installation hasn't hidden the XP partition using Partition Magic. If hidden then unhide it and try again. Such hiding is different from Win98 not being able to see NTFS partitons.

If still having problems then reinsert the XP CD and choose a new installation, NOT an upgrade. You will later be given an option to repair the current installation of XP or install a new one. Choose the former. Have your product key handy and let the repair of the installation proceed. If you used any drivers not installed by XP originally you may be asked to point them out for the repair.

If that doesn't work then you may be back to starters by re-imaging the backup you made at the start.

Good Luck. No Guarantees I'm afraid.

NB Repair using Recovery Console and a Repair Installation are not the same thing. MS uses the word Repair for both when using the installation CD and it is a constant cause of confusion.

To Gulgee: you must install win98 before winxp if you want to be able to boot to either.

Now i have a question: Why would you want a dual boot of Winxp and Win2k? they are the same OS! they are both NT5.5, i just doint get it.

I wanted to sit for MCP, so i am trying to weigh out which of them will be simpler to face....So I want to instal them both and just play around with the stuff until I decide....

Datzit
Abbey

To be on the safest side I should just buy another hard disk and install w2k pro because I can't take the risk of messing with my xp. I just though after using partition magic, I could magically install another o/s.... To be honest I can't take the risk of disturbing the xp to extent that my ingenous geek will be test to it's limit.

Abbey

Many thanks for the detailed responses to my question. In fact I did not explain the whole situation in my first message properly for the sake of brevity, but I think I better explain it now. Actually, until a few days ago my system was working fine. I had windows XP professional on C drive and no operating system on my second hard drive called F. I was using F drive just for backing up my data. Then something went wrong and my system became extremely slow, taking up to 30 minutes to boot up. I ran Norton Disk Defragment. It continued for about 20 hours and it had still done only 35% of the job. I abandoned it and decided to do a new clean reinstall of XP. I think during the reinstall I made some wrong choice and as a result, quite unintentionally I ended up installing XP on my F drive instead of C, with the result that now when I boot up I get the option to boot from two Operating Systems, both of them being XP. If I choose the first option it again takes half an hour to complete the boot. I have now realised that it is the boot up into my XP installed on C drive. If I choose the second option which is also Windows XP, then the boot up proceeds at normal rate and I boot into the XP installed on my F drive. I have now found out, after spending one full day trying to figure out the problem, that my C disk has broken down as at the start of boot up process I get the message S.M.A.R.T, Primary Hard Drive Status Bad; Backup and Replace. I have now ordered a new hard drive and when it arrives I will reinstall XP on that. But as I had long felt the need to have Windows 98 (because some of the old software would not run on XP), I thought may be I could take this opportunity to install Windows 98 on my F drive and XP on C drive and have a dual boot system.
So in summary the situation is: I have at present two drives: C (which is not working properly) and F which is working Ok. At the moment I have XP installed on both of these and I get an option to boot into either of these at boot up. I am going to replace drive C in the next couple of days and want to have Win XP on C and Windows 98 on drive F whilst retaining the ability to boot into either of these at boot up.

Abbey47 There should be no major problem in installing 2K after XP is installed - I did it today just to check it out for sure. You will however need to have your WinXP installation disk and product key so that you can "repair" the XP installation afterwards; also copy the three boot files (see above) onto a floppy and then boot from that floppy to check that the pc will boot from it. When Win2K changes the boot loaders the pc will boot to Win2K alright but until you have run a repair installation of XP you will need that floppy as the easiest way to get you straight back into WinXP. It is also wise to have made the two emergency floppies for PM in case you need to hide/unhide partitions etc, etc.

You don't need to create/format the partition you are going to use with PM beforehand but if you don't have a partition ready for 2K, do ensure you have enough unallocated space on which 2K can make its own partition.

Make sure your bios are set to boot from the fdd and cdrom before the hdd. Insert the Win2K install CD (hold down the shift key to prevent it autorunning) and restart the pc.

When the Win2K installation begins, choose new installation and let the setup copy the files that it needs. It will reboot and give you the options of where to install it and what format to use. Just double check all the various options at this stage about deleting, formatting and choosing where to install it. You will have the same choices if you install it to a second hdd, unless you are using the new hdd as a new master on its own. You can still back-out at this stage if you are unhappy.

When the installation completes you should have a choice at bootup of which os to boot into. The Win2K one should work but the WinXP one will give you an apparent Win2K error about having a corrupt SYSTEMd file. Ignore this message (the oses are a bit confused at this moment), put your WinXP CD in and reboot to it. Once again choose new installation (dont bother with pressing R for the recovery console) but this time after the reboot you should be given an option to install a new installation or repair your current version. Choose Repair (a different R to choose). Things will proceed much like a normal clean install and you will need your product key.

If you are concerned about your data/current xp installation then have a backup; you never know when you are going to have a HDD failure or destructive virus in any case.

Honcho It is much the easiest to install Win9x (or Win2K) beforehand but it is not a must. If XP is on the C drive it is much more problematic but if XP is on another partiton, you can install the Win98/ME os onto C and do much as the above description for installing Win2K after XP, but which however can be put just about anywhere. Win98 will boot straight into the C drive just as after any clean install. The real problems start when Win98/ME are NOT on the C drive.

When I installed WinME after WinXP, the setup hid the WinXP partition, and I couldnt understand the error messages I was getting until I ran PM and saw that XP was attempting to boot to a hidden partition. Unhiding it and Repairing solved the problem.

One can also create a new partiton for Win9x at the start of the drive using PM and thereby push the WinXP partion up by one. Once again the XP installation will have to be repaired after Win9x is installed but the biggest problems arise over the drive letter XP assigns to itself, since it "remembers" where it was originally installed and wont change this. The drive letter can be reassigned using PM and the installation repaired and it is wise to get this sorted before installing the earlier os onto C after which the XP installation will need repairing once again.

One can usually get the WinXP Drive Letter to match what it thinks it should be by hiding or splitting partitions in front of it.

If Win9x is installed onto any other drive than C: after WinXP is running then its own boot loaders will need to be created using debug; I'm not going there just yet.

Gulgee If you are determined to have Win98 away from C then I would suggest using a boot utility like bootmagic. When you get your new drive I would still be inclined to suggest you install Win98 onto C and then install XP as a new installation (dual boot) any where else you like.

Many thanks Paul for your detailed explanation. I am really grateful.
Gulgee

Just in case anyone is interested, I installed Win98 after an installation of WinXP and created a dual boot on a spare HDD today.

Basically I followed the instructions at http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm - with only a couple of hicoughs on the way. The instructions must be followed TO THE LETTER or the dual-boot will fail to operate.

The XP installation itself is in no real danger as long as one doesn't delete or format C, since the changes made to the root of C are reversible if you have copies of boot.ini, ntldr and netdetect.com or by running a repair installation with the XP install disk.

The link above states that it only works for XP on FAT32 installed on the C partition. So I put a clean install of XP on C using NTFS (just to be awkward). Then, using PM this was converted to FAT32 and at the same time I created a logical partition for data on D and an empty primary partition, ready for Win98, on E. Also backed-up C as an image on D using DriveImage, to be on the safe side.

Win98 was then installed, using an ME startupdisk, to E:\Windows. One tricky point here is to know which drive letter to use, since the setup will assign the letters as per Win98 and not as per WinXP and since there is no way to browse to the correct drive at this point. With only a couple of partitions on a single HDD this is not difficult, but with two HDDs, for example, D would be the first primary partition on the slave. That position should always be D from Win9X as long as there is any primary partition on the master. It can be designated almost any letter from WinXP, so this is a potential area of confusion. Installing it in the wrong partition would not be a major problem UNLESS one was to also install it onto C.

My first attempt to use debug <read.scr failed and so did the resulting dual boot. Using the downloaded version (about 2KB) rather than creating my own file was OK. I had to do a new clean install of Win98 onto E, having reinstated the backup image of XP that had been made on the data partition.

Next mistake I made was to boot to the XP recovery console and run fixboot before I had used debug <read.scr to make the bootsect.dos file, etc. This needs to be in place BEFORE you go near the recovery console or the resulting dual boot menu will get you into XP but fails to get you into Win98, even if you run fixboot a second time.

Third attempt worked just fine. So I think that's pretty cool and a useful thing to know.

I havent yet converted the XP installation back onto NTFS and just don't know if it will still work if I do this.

As an aside; I encrypted a folder on XP before converting to FAT to see if it would lose the encryption. PM just wouldn't allow the conversion to go ahead - so that was another obsure bit of useful knowledge to store away somewhere.

Good luck to those that want to "have a go". :D