Want to install win98 as dual boot

[msa969]

I have a pc that I installed Windows 2000 Server so I can practice my Server skills.

I want to install Windows 98 on it, preferably as a dual boot, however I am having some problems.

I went into the BIOS and requested it to boot from the CD-ROM and put the Win98 CD into the CD-ROM so it would install.

However at boot-time it is not reading from the CD-ROM and goes into starting Win2k-server, why???

What can I do???

[malcore]

Win98 cds are not bootable. You would need a win98 boot floppy to run the 98 setup from the cd, or run it from within Windows.

That being said, it's not such a great idea to install any flavour of Win9x after Win2000/XP as Win9x always wants to install on the primary/active partition (where your Win2000 install now is). You would end up not having a choice of which OS to boot to and may not be able to boot to 2000 at all.

There are probably workarounds and those who have done this may poke their heads in.

[Paul Komski]

All the problems of arranging a dual boot with an older OS installed after a newer one relate to (a) the mbr and which file it passes on the boot processes to and (b) the nature of the active/boot partition itself. The easiest way to do this without affecting your current W2K installation is to keep switching and hiding/unhiding the active partition; and the only easy way to do this is with a boot manager such as boot magic. All the same steps can be taken manually but it is messy and long-winded and none of the processes are without risk to your data.

Whatever method is chosen you are going to first need a second primary partition (and this is mandatory if Win2K is installed on NTFS on the first physical partition of the HDD) since Win98 must be on a FAT partition; it is best, though not mandatory, that the installation of Win98 is on the first physical partition. You would first hide the W2K partition and then install Win98 onto a second primary partiton marked as active. You would then use bootmagic (or similar) to choose which one is hidden at boot time with the other one marked active.

If your W2K installation is very important then FIRST MAKE A BACKUP of the partition using Drive Image or Ghost BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE.

If you want to set up this dual boot much more simply - then backup your data on removable media, delete all the current partitions, create at least two new partitions, format the first one as FAT and install W98 onto it. Then reinstall W2K onto a second partition, which will setup the dual boot processes for you on the first physical partition, which will be the "boot partition" for both partitions.

If you had made an image of your current partition, you could at this stage restore it in place of the cleanly installed version of W2K - should you so desire. Should there be any problems of then booting into the original W2K installation you would need to run a repair installation of it.

Yet another approach is to get hold of another HDD (an old second hand one would probaly do W98 quite well) and install it as a slave. Then organise the boot order to HDD1 before HDD0. Then install Win98 onto this separate HDD. You would then need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS in order to choose which HDD to boot from.

[msa969]

Thank you very much Paul Komski,

I have another question:

Can I NETWORK Win2K server operating system that is on this computer as a client to a Win2K SERVER?

[Inka]

Yes there are plenty of options to network em together.

Briefly: Have you set either as a domain controller yet? (run active directory) If not then its done in the same way as any other windoze OS. If you have one or more as a domain controller then there are more things to think about. There is quite a bit of help within W2k check in particular for active directory.

Enjoy!