Dual Boot Win9x/WinME or Windows 2000
Posted: April 15, 2000
Written by: Keith "Farrel" McClellan

Introduction

Dual booting (also known as duel booting, but that is another story...) is something of an evil necessity in this dreadful world. While many of us yearn for the stable, compatible, easy to use, and fast operating system that would exist if this were a perfect world, we choose which factors are most important to us and pick our operating system based on that assessment. However, there is another option – dual booting. Dual booting is the process of installing two operating systems on a computer (true phreaks will multi-boot, which means that they have 3 or more OSes on their computer).

In this article, I will be explaining the process of dual booting Windows 9x/Millennium and Windows 2000. These are the two pre-eminent operating systems of the day, and both (obviously) are from Microsoft. Windows 98 (and very soon Millennium) is the current consumer OS being produced by Microsoft, and Windows 2000 is its business oriented OS (and the successor of Windows NT 4.0 – as a matter of fact, Win2k was originally called NT5).

Who Needs to Dual Boot Anyway?

For a long time, the Windows 9x code base had the compatibility to run your favorite applications, and the Windows NT code base had the speed and stability needed to be considered reliable. With the coming of Windows 2000, however, this line is beginning to become less and less defined, as it adds many of the usability features of the 9x code base to itself. As a matter of fact, I would wholeheartedly recommend any intermediate to advanced computer user move to Win2k.

There is only one compatibility issue that Win2k has yet to fully conquer - game compatibility. While about 90% of your favorite games will run in Win2k (some require special tweaking, but you can usually get them up and running), the 10% that don’t are really annoying. As such, it is necessary for any and all gamers that want to be able to play their games ‘out of the box’ (if such a game exists…). Non-gamers, however, unless they are hopeless beginners, have no reason to not use Win2k exclusively. Your games of solitaire will in no way be affected by the move, and you can preserve most of your system settings by installing over your old Win9x installation.

To boil that all down for you, everyone should be using Win2k unless they are computer illiterate. And only gamers (and possibly users of some very old, archaic software that they just can’t live without) really ‘need’ to dual boot. About half of the tricks to get that 90% of games to install and run on Win2k have to be done in Win9x, and the other 10% of games makes the extra HD wastage worth it.

Before Starting

Actually, this should be read as “Before Even Considering the Move to Win2k at All” but because that is too long for a headline, I went for something more simple (besides, it keeps me consistent with the Win9x/NT dual boot guide). Anyhow, before migrating even partially over to Win2k you should check out Microsoft’s info on the subject [http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/upgrade/default.asp], the up to date hardware compatibility list [http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/upgrade/compat/default.asp], and their Technet site devoted to the subject [http://www.microsoft.com/technet/win2000/]. If your hardware isn’t listed, you may still be able to upgrade – check out your hardware manufacturers' web pages for more information.

Before Starting Continued...

If your computer ran just fine under WinNT 4.0 with your current configuration, you are probably ok, but if you haven’t used any of the NT OSes before you really need to seriously read through those resources – they are important. If you find that you won’t be able to get your system running on Win2k, or that it’s just too complicated for you, you have saved yourself a bunch of problems in the long run – so spend the time. And even if you still decide to continue, the more educated you are about the subject, the easier the installation will be.

Preparation

So you’ve decided to take the plunge. Very, very cool. Before you get started, there are a few things you need to do. First, make sure you have both your Windows 98 CD and serial number, as well as all of the same stuff for Windows 2000. Win2k does have PnP (Plug ‘n Play) support now but it couldn’t hurt to print out a list of your current system config, IRQ’s and all. Also, if you have any third party software you will be using during the install (Partition Magic, etc.), make sure you have that available.

Your next job is to download all of the latest drivers for both operating systems. Yes, both OSes – I know, it’s a chore, but it needs to be done. Also, if you are like me and want Win98 to be fast, you should really go ahead and download a copy of 98lite and even consider paying a few bucks for the professional version. I’ll tell you, I’ve got the latter, and I just love it.

After that, you will need to back up all of your data files, drivers, etc to another hard drive or other backup media somewhere. You are going to have to repartition your hard drive unless you meet one of the two following criteria:

- You’ve already got two FAT32 partitions that are at least 2 gigs in size each
- You’ve got two fast hard drives in the same system (put Win9x on the slower drive then – if you’ve got a 5400 rpm drive and a 7200 rpm drive in the same system, 2000 goes on the 7200 and Win9x goes on the 5400 – don’t worry about the swapfile, we’ll cover that later)

If you’re covered by one of the above situations, just move all the data you want to keep to one of the partitions/drives and don’t forget to move it back later! Otherwise, you really need to back up somewhere. If you are lucky, you’ll have an old 1.2 gig HD laying around (like I do) or a CD burner. If not, it may be time to look into borrowing a Zip drive from work or something.

Oh, one last thing before I forget – you REALLY need a boot disk unless you’ve got a bootable CD-ROM/CD-ROM drive. Even then, a Win9x recovery disk is still nice to have around if your CD-ROM drive acts up or something. This isn’t a problem for the Win2k install though, because you can do it from within Win9x like a regular upgrade. Yippie!





Preparation Continued...

So maybe that wasn’t the last thing – it was the second to last thing. If you decide to go the way of 98Lite (which I whole-heartedly recommend if you are willing to screw with it a bit), burning yourself a CD copy of the modified setup files is a slick way to go about it. As long as you own copies of both Win98 and Win95, it’s not even the slightest bit illegal either. This is the last I’m going to mention 98Lite, because I know not all of you will use it, but I recommend installing 98lite using the “chubby” installation method and then going back and installing the Win95 shell afterwards – this can save a lot of headaches, particularly if you count on IE for your web-browsing.

Partitioning and Formatting

If you are one of the above exceptions, you may be able to skip this section – but if I were you, I’d do it anyway – there is nothing like a clean boot sector and FAT.

First, you are going to want to repartition your hard drive into (at least) two logical drives using FDISK. Each of these logical drives, or partitions, should have at least 2 gigs of space in them. If you can’t devote that much space or each partition, then just stick with Win98.

The basic usage of FDISK goes like this – boot up into DOS (using a boot disk or whatever – just make sure it is really DOS and not some virtual piece of crap) and run FDISK. Delete all of the partitions, logical drives, etc on the hard drive you are going to be partitioning, and then create two logical drives of at least 2 gigs in size. Make sure you use up all of the available space on the drive though – or else you won’t be using the full capacity of the drive. I’d recommend directly dictating the size of the C drive and then letting the computer use the rest of the available space for the D drive.

Once you have partitioned your drive, you will need to reboot your computer with a boot disk of some sort. Then, run format on both of the drives (C & D). You can use the default settings – just make sure you are using a Win98 boot disk (or booting with the Win98 CD) or else you might inadvertently format the drive to FAT16 – which would be very bad.

Installing Windows 98

Go ahead and install Win98 now on the C drive. If you are using 98lite (sorry, couldn’t resist) use 98lite.exe to install – otherwise use the setup /iw command. It will save you from having to go through some of the copyright crapola. Go ahead and install it as you please (I’d recommend going ahead and removing some of the options using the advanced installation, but that’s up to you).

Installing Windows 98 Continued...

When you are done installing Windows 98, go ahead and tweak out the system and download any available updates from Windows Update. While you are at it, take the time to set the swap file up properly (permanent/unchanging size), and make sure you put it on the partition/drive that you are going to be installing Win2k onto. If there are other files on that drive/partition already (if you were using it as a backup), move the files off the drive before setting it up. The reason for this will be explained later.

You may also want to install and set up all of your applications and install all of the up to date drivers you downloaded before you continue on – just make sure you make note of the exact settings you used to install the applications so you can repeat the installation in Win2k without having to have two copies of the software on your system – that’d just suck. Also, before you continue on, run a defrag and after that a scandisk on your C drive – it will save you time and effort in the long run.

Installing Windows 2000 (finally…)

You can install Windows 2000 from within Windows 98 using the autorun pop-up screen or the setup program on the disk. There are a couple of things you should keep in mind when you are installing:

- The version of Windows 2000 you have will determine your installation options. It is important to leave as many of your options open as possible, so wherever you can, choose Advanced, Expert, More info, etc. Use some common sense for eliminating pieces of the OS you will never use, and try to set it up so you have to do as little configuring as possible.
- Make sure you install Windows 2000 to its own partition. I made the mistake on my original install of thinking that they could safely inhabit the same partition. Boy was I wrong... Windows 2000 will thoughtlessly install over some of the programs in your Program Files directory and make it very hard to restore your original Win98 installation (it overwrote System Information… ugh).

After the Installation

You’ve gotten your account set up, and you’ve set up the administrators account as well (if you are smart, you’ll make your private account an admin as well – this saves time in the long run and won’t cause problems unless you mess up bad. If you are concerned with that, though, just make sure you are logged in as the admin whenever you install anything or change any settings…). Then, go ahead and log on to Windows Update and download any applicable security updates and so on. Next, set up your pagefile to be the same size as your swapfile on Win9x and aim it at the same drive as well. While you are at it, if you haven’t already, install all of the driver updates you downloaded before continuing.

Customizing your Installation

There is a trick that was sent into me by a kind reader that I thought I should pass on. There is a way to expand the list of items that you find in the Add/Remove Components section of the control panel. Apparently, this was discovered by one of the guys over at Planetenews – a French gaming site (the guy was French too). Here are the digs:

Open the file sysoc.inf into Notepad. You will find it in your %winntdir%\inf subdirectory (the directory may be hidden if you have trouble finding it – you can use Folder Options => View to change that setting). In the components section of the inf file, you will see a whole bunch of hide properties on a bunch of components. Go ahead and delete the hide attributes on all of them (make sure you get the extra comma too). Make sure you get all of the hide properties in the entire file and then save it. You should find that you now have a bunch more options you can remove if you want.

Sharing Pagefiles

Other than the name difference, the win386.swp and pagefile.sys files are virtually identical assuming you have them both set to the same, unchanging size. And, believe it or not, there is a way to convince the two OSes to share a single swapfile so as to save hard drive space. It’s pretty tough though, so unless you feel comfortable messing with some high level tweaks, stay away from this one – if you screw up, don’t hold me accountable.

I couldn’t figure out how to get Windows 98 to use a different name for its swapfile (which is what I would have preferred. If there is a way to do this, let me know), so this little piece of dirty work will have to be done within Windows 2000. The key that we will be modifying is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management] – we will be changing the PagingFiles value.

Before you continue on with this tweak, I recommend you go back and export a copy of that key as it currently exists, because it is impossible for me to create an undo key for this operation.

Now, you can either choose to edit the value manually or use one of my pre-defined defaults. To edit the value manually, right click on the value and select Modify. You will want to modify the letters/numbers on the far right – they will automatically change the hex values to the left for you. Just be careful to leave those dots in between each character (be careful not to delete them – I haven’t yet figured out how to type them using the keyboard – they are different than regular periods). If you are going to be less brave, here are the default registry files for 128, 192, and 256 MB of virtual memory for both the C and D drives.

C Drive: 128 MB; 192 MB; 256 MB
D Drive: 128 MB; 192 MB; 256 MB

After changing the registry setting reboot into Win2k and log on to an administrator account. Then go ahead and delete pagefile.sys from your root directory – there should be a warning of some sort about deleting the file. Ignore it and delete it anyway, and then reboot again. Check and see if the file was recreated – if it wasn’t, you are in the clear.

Wrapping Things Up

Now that you’ve got that all cleared up and are saving yourself a bundle of physical disk space, go ahead and reinstall all of your programs again (to the same directory as you did originally – make sure you select all of the same options as well). Once you’ve got that all covered, go ahead and tweak out your system and defrag both of the hard disks to finish up.

Conclusion

Well, hopefully this will help you get the whole dual-boot situation in order. As new drivers and patches for our games come out, this kind of setup will hopefully become less and less important, but for the time being it is a necessity. Oh well.

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