Glidos wrote:Really I wanted to do this in a way that I get a menu on boot up from which I can select which OS to boot. I didn't really want to have to run any sort of configuration tool. Did you have a particular partition manager in mind?
I use Acronis PartitionExpert for managing my partitions, but any partition manager will do. Acronis also offers their OS Selector which includes partition management.
Perhaps you might want to look at BootIt NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/). You can download a fully working trial version, and test it. It also include a boot manager 😀
I briefly used something called System Commander. It worked, but all it really did was to do the ACTIVE/HIDE operation according to a nice little menu. I decided that I prefered to do it manually, and not to rely on too much magic behind the screen(!).
More info on other boot/disk managers can be found here: http://members.cox.net/dos/boot.htm
Glidos wrote:On the other hand, I don't mind if I have to use two disks, rather than two partitions on a single disk.
Two partitions, or two disks - it does not really matter. My guess is that people recommendes two separate disks, because the common DOS FDISK program will only create ONE primary partion - the rest of the disk has to be an EXTENDED partitions. And only a PRIMARY partition can be made ACTIVE - and bootable by a BIOS.
But that is a limitation of DOS FDISK - the Master Boot Record (MBR) can handle 4 primary partitions (or more commonly 1-3 primaries, and 1 extended partition).
From the point of the BIOS, it does not make any difference if the active partition is one out of 2 partitions on the same disk, or if the active partition is on one out of 2 disks.
Glidos wrote:Making use of that fact that W98 can't see NTFS occured to me, but didn't get me anywhere. At one stage I had XP on the master and 98 on the slave; I added a line to boot.ini to make it boot the slave, hoping that 98 would come up seeing its own disc as C because it couldn't understand the format of the master. Didn't work.
BOOT.INI does not really boot anything. It's just a data file used by the OS loader (NTLDR). When NTLDR is running the drive letter assignments (including what C is) are already done.
Glidos wrote:I think I could do this with lilo, because that can be set up to make the BIOS calls that swap discs, but I'd proabably be force […]
Show full quote
I think I could do this with lilo, because that can be set up to make the BIOS calls that swap discs, but I'd proabably be forced to have a small Linux partition to do it, which I'd rather avoid.
The instructions I've seen say to
1) Install XP on the master
2) Change HDD jumpers to swap master and slave.
3) Install 98 on what is now the master (leaving XP on what is now the slave).
4) Copy boot.ini ntdetect and ntldr form the XP disc to the 98 disc.
5) Change boot.ini to reflect that XP is now on the slave, and that there
is a second option (being 98 on C:)
6) Use a recovery disc to blat the MBR tht was on the XP disc, onto
the 98 disc, so that it starts with the XP boot sequence up until reading
boot.ini.
It was 6 I couldn't find a way to do.
Hmm - I don't think that will ever work. When XP is installed, it will pollute the registry, and mulitudes of INI files with "C:\.......". Using the method above (if it could be made to dual-boot), would assign the letter D to the XP partition, and prevent XP from ever running.
If you want to go down that route, I recommend this guide: http://www.tburke.net/info/ntldr/ntldr_hacking_guide.htm
One question though: Why do you want Win98 and WinXP to both be on the C drive? I boot from my C-partion, with a BOOT.INI that allows me to run Win95 from C, XP from H, and a test-installation of XP from K.
--
MiniMax
DOSBox 60 seconds guide | How to ask questions
_________________
Lenovo M58p | Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66 GHz | Radeon R7 240 | LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH40N | Fedora 32