[pyritechips]

Hello!

A dual platform forum has been discussed elsewhere and unfortunately it does not seem about to happen.

I have a dual platform for about a month now and I have spent that time chasing bugs, formatting, reinstalling one OS or the other. Frankly I am getting tired of it all. I'm doing this partly to learn but it's frustrating doing it by the "hit and miss" method.

What I want to do in lieu of a "Dual" forum is write up my own experiences and discoveries and add a page to my website. What I would like is input from those of you that have also gone the dual route. What I want is problems that have been encounted and how they were solved, things to avoid, tips, etc.

If I can get a decent response I can have a page whipped up in no time. Until then I will continue to go it alone here. I now have errors messages in a cleanly installed W98se!

Oh well! Thanks in advance for any input you may offer.

[pyritechips]

Might as well forget it! I just had to reinstall 98 and now w2k is messed again!! grr!!! I'm going to flip a coin and dump 1 OS........

[griffinspc]

Dual's are a pain but I found that by isolating the OS's (in my case 3; WinNT, Win98 and Linux) that things ran very smoothly. The trick was the use of XOSL.

XOSL is a third party boot utility that is freeware and in my humble opinion, terrific. You can set the utility to exclude the other OS's or partially recognize them, whatever.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/geurt/home.html

Check it out and see what you think.

[cybertech]

I had a dual boot w98 & nt4 w/fat32. That toasted when I started using the applications with both systems.

2nd time around I used ntfs for the nt install and things went very well.

I've seen dual boots with third party boot utilities and never had a problem working on them. I think that's due to hidden partitions, each system only being allowed to see it's own environment.

Good luck on your tests!

[pyritechips]

Thx for the responses people!

I completely nuked my HDD (C: and D: )and clean installed W98se on C:

After a cooling off period and after I'm confident that it is stable, then I will consider reinstalling W2K. I was wondering if installing W2K on FAT32 had any effects. Am I wrong or must both OS's be on FAT32 to use common files, ie. myfavouritepic.jpg? W2K won't be much use if I have to load it on NTFS and not be able to access any of my files.

[jakoval]

I've got a couple of systems that I dual-boot 98SE and 2K. In one I have the 2OS'es on separate partitions on the same HD, on the other they're on separate partitions. I use FAT32 for both - don't need the security of NTFS (or the hassles). In both setups, I use 2k's boot loader, and all apps are installed separately for each OS in their respective partitions. Data goes in its own partition - accessed/shared by both OS.
Haven't had any problems with either of these systems. Scandisk/defrag only run in 2k for the 2k partition, 98 for the 98 partition. Data partition is done by 2k system ( just because I had to pick one and I use the 2K installations more.) I did have one dual setup once where I defragged all partitions from within 98 - that's when I seemed to run into problems.

If you set up 2K in an NTFS partition, you won't be able to see it with the 98. If you keep your data in a separate partition, that shouldn't be a problem.

[Linkmaster]

Hey Jim,
See I told you , 2000 is cursing your 98SE . It wants to be by itself!!! LOL LOL LOL

See ya tonite, Good Friend!!