Dual Boot, Or whatever it's called

[Max Power]

Hey, my TV tuner card well only work with Windows 98, but I really want XP. I've heard of this way that lets you have two Os's (called dual booting I think). So, how does this work, and what is it like? Thanks.

[Colin]

That's rather easy. You have to have 2 partitions on your hdd, install Win98 on the primary one then install WinXP. XP will detect an OS on the 1st partition and setup a boot manager for you automatically. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Max Power]

And how would I make the two partitions on my hdd? So I'd install 98, then XP? NAd how would I tell 98 to install on the primary one? Thanks.

[Colin]

You'll need to FDISK your drive into 2 partitions prior to installing your OS... BECAREFUL WITH FDISK THOUGH!!! It's a very powerful program. If you can't risk any data on your HDD, get a program like Partition Magic and it should be able to help you out. Win98 is kinda stupid it'll install onto the primary partition by default. WinXP will let you select where to install.

[Max Power]

So where do I get these programs you speak of?

[ADRAMELK]

mirc is a great place to get software.... if you uh.... are short on cash.<BR><BR>When i used to dual boot 98 and NT I had to manually change my boot.ini file. Not sure if it had more to do with 98 being a ************************ty os or not. If you install both OS's and you dont get the selection menu, thats what you need to do also. Make sure one partition is (0) and the other is (1).<BR><BR>Honestly though, I dont see why you cant get your tuner card to work in XP.<BR><BR>http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/ ---> Powerquest site, maybee some shareware on there.... <BR><BR> <BR><BR>

[Max Power]

My old ATI TV ISA has so many problems, and you cant even find contacts on the ATI site, in the faq about the error message I get all it says is that the vcard and the tuner card must be connected by the ribbon cable, I don't know if the radeon has this or not. I'd rather just upgrade my vcard then buying a tv wonder... And is it worth upgrading to a radeon 7500? or should I just save up for a radeon 8500? Thanks.

[ADRAMELK]

Methinks you should go for the 8500 its a good card.<BR><BR>What video card do you have now?<BR><BR>Wo, ISA cards, I remember those.

[Max Power]

Oh sry, a geforce 2 mx 400... Not very good by your guy's standerds. You should probly read my other topic over in the video card section of this site. Its like the 1st one there... you cant miss it.<BR><BR>EDIT: I have an old ATI TV ISA it was there 1st tv tuner card and it only works with windows 98. Thats why I wanted the dual boot thingy. I'm not sure if it only works with rage cards, or ATI cards. If the card won't work with a radeon then im just getting a new tv tuner.

[ADRAMELK]

I was looking at some tuner cards under $50 on <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.pricewatch.com">pricewatch</a> I think you should upgrade.<BR><BR>Dual booting shouldnt be difficult though.<BR><BR> ive got a gf2 pro <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Max Power]

Oh cool, I thout all you guys had geforce 4's. Yeah, I'll probly eather upgrade my tuner or my vcard. IS there an email fro ATI customer support? I really need it.

[ADRAMELK]

I wish I had GF4, im tryin to get Colin to hook me up...... <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">

[Colin]

Haha!!! You guys crack me up. <BR><BR>ADRAMELK, Max Power you'll get your chance to win a GF4 very soon. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0"><BR><BR>That's all I'm going to say though. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif" border="0">

[Max Power]

Can someone find or make a step by step guide to this dual booting?

[ADRAMELK]

Theres some pdfs document that come with PartitionMagic that should be just what you need.<BR><BR>You can just pop the winXP cd in and boot from it. It will detect 98 and give you an option to create a new partition and install XP there. <BR><BR>Get XP2600 off mirc, dont give microsuck your $.<BR><BR>Colin im not |337 enough to win a tip and tweak contest, how about a poor college kid who cant afford a new video card story contest.

[Max Power]

How about a poor kid with no job who can't get a job and the only way he makes money is by selling stuff and xmas and birthdays Article writing context? (I have some good canadian ones I wrote for school).

[Colin]

Haha... I can't say anythign else. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"><BR><BR>Max Power, first do you need any of the info on your currnet HDD?

[Max Power]

Uhhh, yes. Its a tushoba (or whatever) 10 gig drive... but its really only 9.53. How do I find out teh speeds and stuff of it?

[Colin]

If you need the programs/files on y our hDD I cna't help you. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif" border="0"> I can only direct you if it's clean. <BR><BR>As for the speed, I'm almost 100% sure it's a 5400 RPM drive.

[Max Power]

Is that good? Whats the new maxter drive at?

[Colin]

5400 RPM was the standard back then. These days HDD's run up to 7200 RPM. As you can guess the faster RPM means faster access time and faster data transfers! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Max Power]

Well before I got my 10 gig drive i had a 1 gig drive.... What that 5400 as well? Cause my new drive speed up my computer a lot.

[PAnts]

Going back to the dual-booting...<BR><BR>If you don't want to loose any data, but still want to repartiton, use FIPs. Its freeware (:-P to Partition Magic). You defrag your HD first and the movement of data to the begining of the drive means that all your unused blocks will be at the end. You now run FIPs and can create a new partition from where the last block on the original left off, or small if you wish. Once the "cut" has been made FIPs creates a second primary partition (don't be fool by the primary bit, you can have up to 4 primary partitions on an HD. An extended partition BTW is a kind of (primary) partition that can have yet more partition inside it, called logical drives).<BR><BR>Having done all that you reboot and run scandisk on the old, recently shortened, partition. Scandisk will give error rambling on about incorrect volume size or whatever, but this is normal. After all, it IS now incorrect, you're running scandisk to "correct" it :-)<BR><BR>The new partition will probably need formatting, but is otherwise ready for use.<BR><BR>One more thing - be warned - even though FIP is a program for "non-destructive splitting of harddisk partitions", as with everything else it can't be guanteed to work 100% of the time, so make sure you have some form of back up.<BR><BR>PAnts <BR><BR>EDIT: Forgot the link. FIPs can be obtained <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/">here</a>. And scandisk comes with windows... <BR><BR>EDIT 2: This should probably go in the tips contest and win me some memory...

[Colin]

Your 1 GB HDD was probably spiining at 4200 RPM... You should use your new HDD as the main drive, you';ll notice that your overall system is faster. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"><BR><BR>Hmm, thanks PAnts! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"> I've never used FIP myself, but I'll check it out on the wknd! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Max Power]

I still don't understand. And I threw my old drive out <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Colin]

<br><br><< <i>I still don't understand. And I threw my old drive out </i> >><br><br> Don't worry about it. It's ancient history! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">

[IFMU]

Ok this wil be a lil long, but hopefully it wil help yea out some.<BR>First, back up your stuff, fdisk will kill it all. Yes, fdisk will destroy all information on your hdd, so if you cant accept that, then this will not be for you. heh <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif" border="0"><BR>2nd: Make sure you have a Win98 Boot up disk. Easy enough to make if you dont. Go to control panel, add remove programs, and there should be a tab for creating a boot disk.<BR>3rd: Now that you have the disk, or had to make it, doesnt matter.<BR>4th: Reboot the system, with the floppy in the drive. It should boot to it, if not, then you will have to change those settings in bios to boot from floppy first. If you need help here lemme know and I can write it up too.<BR>5th: It will ask 3 options on boot up, 1, boot with cd support, 2, boot w/out 3, something? Cant recall, sorry.<BR>Here you will want to choose 2. Once FDisk is done, you will have to boot up again anyways, so no boot with cd support needed this time.<BR>6th: Once it gets to a DOS prompt window, type in > fdisk < (without the arrows obviouslly) read the steps its taking you through, so you will know better next time what you will be doing.<BR>It should here ask (dependent on hdd size, etc) it you want to enable large hdd support.) By defualt it wil be at > Y < you want that.<BR>next, you will have a total of 4 options. (Presuming there is onely 1 physical hdd in the system, if not there will be 5. But thats another story of sorts.)<BR>Now, in the 4 options, the first is create primary partition, second is create logical partition, third is delete partition, and if I recall correctly, forth err.. crap, cant remember... heh, oh well for this it wont be needed.<BR>Now, here you will have to delete the present partition/s. So select 3. Now it will give you 4 more options. 1 delete primary partition 2 delete extended partition drive 3 delete logical partition 4 delete non-DOS partition.<BR>Here you will need to delete the primary partition so hit 3 and go through the steps to delete it.<BR>Next, you will need to create a new partition. So ESC to the first FDISK screen again if your not there.<BR>Now, hit 1 and create the partition. When it asks you if you want to make that partition the full hdd size, select > N < and it will then ask for the partition size. the easiest way to select this is to put in a percentage. so in this case, I would say maybe a 50&/50% split. But, I dont know how much you will use each OS in comparison to the other. So, if you plan to play mostly games on 98, and just play to learn XP, then maybe a 75%/25% would be ok. Your call here. Just keep in mind to use the % sign if I remember correctly. Or you might have a hdd partition only 50megs in size!!! <BR>Now, that you ahve the primary partition, you will need to create the extended partition. Here you should be at the first FDISK screen again. Now, again, hit 1. now you will see a create primary, create extended, create logical. Hit 2, Extended. For this, select the rest of the percentage you want this section to be. So say if you wanted to do a triple boot, you could create here 2 more partitions. But, I will keep this simple and say you will be creating just 2. 98 and XP. Now, Put in the other percentage you need this drive to be, so if you wanted 50/50 put in the 50% now.<BR>Then once its created, ESC out once. It will then create the Logical drive partition. Now once this is done, ESC out to the first FDISK screen and hit ESC once more. <BR>Now, it will tell you that you need to reboot for the changes to take effect, hit ESC and it will take you back to the dos prompt. Remove the 98 boot disk here, and let the system boot from the CDRom. Where you should have the 98 CD in. Now, it should boot to the 98 CD. And install 98. It will ask to format the drives while it is installing. But I have had a few times where it wouldnt. If you need help with this LMK. I can tell yea how to do that as well.<BR><BR>Well, sorry for the huge post. I hope that is what you were wanting to know, if not, I just spent the last 10 minutes explaining useless info.. heh..<BR>But if it is, kewl.<BR>Let us know how it goes if yea do this.<BR>IFMU

[PAnts]

Just curious - Has anyone tried the FIPS thing for themselves yet.<BR>Colin, you said you would over the weekend, did it go OK?