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Yeah, i know this has been asked before but mine is a little different (i hope) couldnt find a tech section anymore so i guess this goes here.
I have a computer with two hard drives, and i want to install a secondary OS to the Slave HardDrive, and i also want to install two copies of the exact same OS. So i want a copies of Windows 98 on one Boot, and another copy of Windows 98 for the second Boot, so er, how would i go about this?
In case your wondering why im doing this its because i currently use this computer for gaming, and id rather not install the web development set (i want to install PHP, PERL, MYSQL, APACHE on my comp) on the same OS. It may not screw things up, but id rather not work with it on the same setup.
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Unfortunately Windows 9x doesn't allow dual-booting. You have to install another Windows OS which does (NT/2000/XP) as the *second* OS.
Life is like a box of chocolates', hrm, WTF, no it isn't, more like, 'life is like a steaming pile of horse crap.'
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Sigh, okay thanks for your help. Guess ill have to try something else.
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Actually, you could download a dualbootload, which let's you choose which OS to boot into.
One other option would be:
Install win 98 again on the other drive, this will make it the default one, ie. Bootdrive.
Now you have something like this:
C:\Windows (First install)
D:\Windows (Secondary install, the one booted as default)
Now, edit a file called D:\MSDOS.SYS (important that you edit the one on the booted disk):
And add/edit the following lines in the [OPTIONS] category:
BootMenu=1
BootMenuDelay=5
The first line enables the boot menu for Win98
And sets the default chooise to the first one on the list.
The second line makes your computer halt at the bootmenu for 5 sec.
Now, after you've done that, reboot.
Wait until the menu appears, now you have 5 sec. to choose Pure DOS
And:
C: (it might be there already, but I think it defaults to the booted disk, not sure)
cd windows
win
And it SHOULD (untested) bootup your secondary windows install.
Like I said, this is untesed, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.
Note though, that a program installed while running first install wil not run in secondare install (if it uses registry settings or installs files to the windows directory and relies on the %WINDIR% variable to find them)
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The easiest thing actually, is that your BIOS might support 'boot selecting'... like, it defaults to the primary master, but if you hit F11 on startup, (that's what it is for me), you get a menu and can boot to whatever you like.
Alternatively, you could muck around with Grub or whatever, but honestly the BIOS method is least likely to screw something up.
(or you could what I did for a while and just swap the ribbon cables around...)
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Z!re's solution is the standard way to do it with Windows, and it probably the safest.
But if you want to install a nice graphical grub boot menu using the Gentoo minimal install cd (82 MB download, another linux livecd with grub might work), I could walk you through it. It's easy to undo 8)
