Installing Windows 98

[DanGrease]

My friend is asking me for help, since he doesnt know anything about computers, only games, to install Windows 98 on his machine. He already has the CD and the boot disk he told me, he only needs to install it. Im asking you guys since I only know how to install it on the primary HD. He has two HD and he wants to install it on the slave. How do I do? I have already tried but it seems that it formats the HD but after it just installs on the primary HD. I really need a specific explination and instructions, like step-by-step, of how to install this OS. Thansk for listening

dan

[PresterJohn]

as you've have discovered, it is not possible to install win98 on a non-primary drive using the native installer.

the only way i know of to getting it to work the way you want is to install a boot manager program. ranish (freeware) and bootmagic & boot commander (both commercial) are just two packages out there. there's another freeware app...name starts with "X"...i forgot.

[DanGrease]

Wow! Thats some news for me, I didnt know 98 cant be installed on a non-primary HD unless you use a boot manager program. Well, gotta try out with the programs you just told me. Thanks PJ

dan

I believe he can install to a Slave drive, it just needs to have the boot files on an Active partition, which is usually Primary/Master.

What is on the Master drive? If it's formatted FAT32, then you could install to the Slave drive by telling it which drive/directory to install to during the setup.

I may be mistaken, but I used to install to "D:\WINDOWS" but I don't remember if it was to just another partition on the Master drive or if it was to the Slave drive.

Are you changing it's default location during setup?

[DanGrease]

My friend got Windows XP Pro on his first HD, so its formatted in NTFS. He wants to install it on the slave hard drive but everytime I try it just starts installing on the primary. I have already formatted the second HD to Fat32 with the boot disk, but it doesnt seem to work to install it there! He is now wondering if he should install Windows XP Home on the slave, since he is only going to use this HD for gaming. I will check with him today and see if he wants XP instead. What do you think?

dan

[meese]

If you want to dual boot you need to load win98 first on the first drive. It will only load on the c: partition. Then install XP since it is able to be loaded on any partition.

Since the drive is formatted NTFS, he can't do it the way he's wanting to at this point. You might try what PresterJohn suggested above.

To do it w/o using anyting but what he has already, he'll have to install XP as FAT32 so he can put 98 on the slave. This of course means he'd have to reinstall XP. If he wants to dual boot, I suggest installing 98 first, if he wants it on the slave, he's gonna have to format the master as FAT32 first, it'll be "C" and it will install just the boot files. You might wanna prep the slave by partitioning and formatting before the install process. If he just does the two partitions, master will be "C" and slave will be "D". He'll have to tell 98 setup that he wants to install to "D:\WINDOWS" which will put everything on "D", except for the boot files. Have him install XP afterwards which will add it's boot loader which will let him choose between 98 and XP during startup.

I hope I haven't totally confused you.

Just to clear one thing up, 98 does not HAVE to be installed to "C:". Just the boot files. You could load 98 to "Z:\WINDOWS" if you wanted, it's just you have to have a "C:\" so it can put MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and COMMAND.COM to load Windows.

Now one thing is true, in order for 98 to install the boot files to "C", it has to be a bootable, active partition.

[DanGrease]

Nope not at all.
The problem is that he has important stuff on his Windows XP, and he just cant format it right now. Another problem is that he needs to have the Windows XP in the primary HD since the primary has a rotation per minute of 7200, while the slave has 5400. Both are 40 GB. Just talked to him and he seems to be leaning on installing XP too in this HD. The problem on this is that he always gets errors while he playes games in XP, and he thinks he get better performance in 98 rather than XP. He is wondering what you guys think.

dan

[meese]

One thing he can do is get a removable hard drive rack. This way you have two hard drives that are Masters, but you only use one at a time.