Strategy for setting up 95/2000 dual boot

[tbalazs]

I want to set up a dual boot system in which the current 95 config (FAT32) is retained and in which the 2000 system is an upgrade of that config. Would the following strategy work safely?
IDE1 Master has partitions C: (Win95) and E: (FAT32)
IDE1 Slave is D: (FAT32)
IDE2 Master is CD ROM F:
Copy C:\ to E:\ under 95 using xcopy /s/c/h/e/r/k/y *.*
Edit copy of Msdos.sys on E: so that Windows on E: not C:
Reboot to DOS and make E: active partition with FDisk
Reboot to Windows 95 (from E: now)
Run 2000 upgrade from CD (will upgrade the E: copy of 95???)
Reboot to DOS and make C: active again

Doing it this way, will 2000 "know" there are 2 OSes, as it would if I'd put a fresh 2000 on a spare partition?

Thanks for any tips.
Tony.

[hiredgoonz]

I don't think it will work as you have it layed out: once you make C: active again at the end of your process (after upgrading the E: copy of 95) it will be 95 that will load...the boot loader that allows dual boot of 2000 and 9x is part of 2000...so if 95 is installed on the active partition, I don't think the boot loader in 2000 will initialize...

You might be able to get it to work by "repairing" your current installation of 2000 though...once you've upgraded your E: drive copy of 95 to 2000, and then made C: active again, just boot from the 2000 cd (assuming you can boot from cd, if not, you'll have to make a win2000 rescue disk and boot from that) and choose the "repair current installation" option, this may work.

This is also the easiest way to dual boot 2000/9x on systems that have 2000 installed first...

[baoluanle]

Do you have the 2000 upgrade or full version? if you have the full version then it's much easier! this is what i did to 20 pc's on my pc lab at school (Yep it's painful). since you already have win95 running on your machine and you have multiple partitions then just pop in the win 2k full version under win95 and run winnt32.exe. setup will ask if you want to upgrade or install the full win 2k, don't choose upgrade, choose installing fresh win 2k, and proceed! during the process of setup BEFORE THE FIRST RESTART, you will see setup giving you three custom setting options for your setup, one of those will allow you to choose the option of selecting the partition for your win 2k and whether you want to copy the files setup needs (during the installation process) to you hard drive or running it off of the cdrom (the former is faster!). btw, if you don't choose the option of selecting partition for your win 2k, it will install win 2k on your c: and screw up your win 95. then after copying some files, setup will restart your computer for the first time... i think you can pick it up from hereon; it's pretty straight forward. good luck!

Yes, I do contribute to this forum!

[tbalazs]

Thanks baoluanle amd hiredgoonz. I think I can get it right from here on.
Tony.