Last Revised: 1/28/04
We developed a Windows 2000 Ghost image formatted with NTFS and one day realized we need a dual-boot setup for the learning center. The company was currently using Windows 98 SE as a desktop standard and we were slowly transitioning it to Windows 2000. The challenge: get Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 dual-booting in tandem with both using drive C: as the boot drive in each operating system from the same disk. Now this problem may seem easy, but it is not! Windows 98 SE requires some of its boot files to be on the C: drive and drive C: has to be either FAT-16 or FAT-32. This would obviously conflict with the NTFS nature of our image. If we could be flexible in our requirements, one could:
1. Image a PC with the Windows 2000 NTFS image
2. Convert it back to FAT-32 with Partition Magic
3. Size down the FAT-32 partition
4. Make a new FAT-32 partition
5. Install Windows 98 SE to new partition
6. Run the Windows 2000 Recovery Console to restore the Windows 2000 boot loader (the RC will automatically create a bootsect.dos file (copy of the Windows 98 SE boot record) & menu option for Windows 98 SE)
Simple, right? Unfortunately, we were using SMS 2003 to push out applications to C:\ in Windows 2000, so moving it to D:\ would break the pushed applications and by using FAT-32 the security of the operating system becomes zero for all intents and purposes. So what's the solution?
1. Get a copy of Partition Magic. I used version 6. I checked eBay and the most this version went for was $10.
2. Get a copy of the Smart Boot Manager. This puppy is freeware.
3. Obviously, a copy of Symantec Ghost was needed in my case, but you can use these instructions if you are installing Windows 2000 fresh. In my case, I:
1. Imaged the PC with the Windows 2000 NTFS image
2. Sized down the the NTFS partition with Partition Magic and left the rest of the space as "unallocated"
3. With Partition Magic, I placed the rest of the unallocated space BEFORE the NTFS partition. In Partition Magic, you will see this option as "Free Space Before". Make this partition as big as you want the Windows 98 SE partition to be and convert it to either to the FAT-16 or FAT-32 file system (remember, there is a 2GB limit on FAT-16 partitions).
4. Twiddle your thumbs as Partition Magic takes ages to complete these tasks. Boot up Windows 2000 and you will see that it still boots up as C:. Now boot from a Windows 98 diskette (you can get one from www.bootdisk.com) and run "fdisk". You should see that partition 1 is listed as C: and of type FAT-32/16 (depending on which on you picked). Partition 2 is listed as a NTFS partition and has no drive letter assigned to it, but it will have a capital A by it in the status field. That means it's the active partition, which in turn means the BIOS will boot to it directly. From the floppy disk, execute the command "sys C:". This will make the FAT-32/16 partition a bootable DOS partition.
5. Now let's install the Smart Boot Manager. Copy sbminst.exe and cwsdpmi.exe to a floppy. Boot from the Windows 98 boot disk. Switch disks and place the floppy that has sbminst.exe on it. Now execute the command "sbminst -t us -d 128". This will install the Smart Boot Manager to the first disk. It installs into the first track, so unlike XOSL, System Commander and BootMagic, you won't have to make a separate partition which makes this program golden.
6. You should now see the Smart Boot Manager come up at boot time and it should display one NTFS partition and one FAT-32/16 partition in the menu listing. Launch both and check to make sure each boots from the C: drive. Boot from the Windows 98 SE floppy disk (which has built-in CD-ROM drivers) and copy the WIN98 subdirectory from the Windows 98 SE CD to the root of the FAT-32/16 partition. I tried installing Windows 98 SE right after this step, but it did not like that. I had to reboot the computer and boot directly into the FAT-32/16 partition via the Smart Boot Manager.
7. Upon installing Windows 98 SE, it will detect the NTFS partition and will warn you about this. Thank you Mr. Gates, I know what I am doing, proceed!
8. Upon rebooting, Windows 98 SE wipes out the master boot record (MBR). That wasn't very nice! You will now have to reinstall the Smart Boot Manager.
Tada: you have now successfully gotten Windows 2000 and Windows 98 SE to both boot from C: on the same drive! You'll want to clean up the Smart Boot Manager menu, because it puts a lot of crap on there. Now, we could hide these partitions so that when Windows 2000 boots up it won't see the FAT-32/16 partition and vice versa. Is this really necessary? Well, it's probably good form: we should try to isolate each operating system from each other. Windows 98 SE in reality won't bother the Windows 2000 installation (because it doesn't understand NTFS) and the Windows 98 SE C: drive will come up as a D: drive in Windows 2000.
Oh, just one more note! I tried to use sysprep to have Windows 2000 generate a unique SID for each installation. Unfortunately, sysprep would change the ARC path in the boot.ini file breaking the Windows 2000 installation. So what I did is just make a ghost image as usual and then used Newsid to make a unique SID for each image. Problem solved!