VOGONS


First post, by breadbin

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I recently started messing around with my Pentium 3 again and decided to try and get a DOS 6.2 and Windows 98 dual boot but with Windows 2000 aswell so I can use the USB ports to transfer data. I made three partitions, 1.5GB FAT16 for DOS, 3GB FAT32 for Windows 98 and 3.5GB NTFS for Win2k. I installed DOS on the primary, then Windows 98, I wanted to put it on the next partition but it wouldn't let me. So it is in the FAT16 partition with DOS. Not ideal, but it works great so far. Then Win2K went on the last partition on NTFS. I edited the msdos.sys file so I have the boot menu for Win98 which allows me to boot DOS6.22. So now as it stands, I have access to each operating system from booting, it seems to run perfectly although I would prefer to have Windows 98 on the empty FAT32 partition. Is there a way to move it? Or even a way to tell it to install there in the first place?

The challenge I can see is that if I move it to the FAT32 partition manually the MBR won't see it and how do I change where it points to?

Reply 1 of 3, by aha2940

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You can control the partition where Windows / DOS installs by hiding partitions. Many boot managers can do that on the fly, so that your Windows /DOS installation only sees the partitions you want, and that way you can also control which partition is seen as C:.

Reply 2 of 3, by HandOfFate

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For Windows 95, 98 (and probably ME) you don't have to hide the partition, you only have to set its partition to 'active' when you install or boot it. It will then consider that partition as 'C:' and leave the DOS 6.22 files on what will then be 'D:' alone. Because if you keep the DOS partition as active and tell Windows 98 to install to D:, it will still modify the command.com etc. on C:.

Booting between the different OSes can then be done with a boot manager like Plop Boot Manager (not easy to use) or System Commander (easy to use and period correct)

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Reply 3 of 3, by Jorpho

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Instead of installing a boot manager, you can also just toggle the "active" flag manually using any old partition manager. (Norton Ghost's "gdisk" is very convenient.) That way you don't have to worry about messing up your boot manager and rendering your computer unbootable. Or you can just use the Windows 2000 boot manager.

DOS 6.2 and Windows 98 dual boot but with Windows 2000 aswell so I can use the USB ports to transfer data.

There really isn't much point in having separate partitions for DOS 6.22 and Windows 98. There is practically nothing you can do in DOS 6.22 that you can't do just as easily in Windows 98's MS-DOS mode.

Also, Windows 98 has perfectly adequate USB support as far as data transfer is concerned and you don't need Windows 2000 for that. There are even DOS drivers for USB flash drives.