Csanii, you aren't going to be able to simply 'yank' one drive out and get
things to work on the other drive. I have two drives, one had XP installed
on it and the other Vista. Initially this wasn't a problem (other than the
usual one of losing restore points when booting to xp). I then decided to
reformat my C: drive and install Vista on it. To my amazement Vista put the
boot loader on my 'second' hard drive - something I didn't want. To
counteract this I removed my second hard drive and did a 'startup repair'
from the Vista DVD. This then put the boot loader files onto my C: drive
(exactly where I wanted them). After finally solving the problem I
re-inserted my second hard drive and rebooted. I simply got a 'no operating
system found' message. Again I did a startup repair and Vista, again, loaded
the boot loader onto my 'second' hard drive. While I could access both
operating system now this wasn't the setup I wanted. Apparently it is a BIOS
problem, but, as my machine is over 2 years old there were no BIOS updates
to rectify the problem. If I remember correctly, I finally remedied the
problem by copying an image of Vista to the C: drive (it was a backup image
I had created when I first installed Vista) and, strangely, that solved the
problem of Vista putting the boot loader on the second hard drive. I'm still
not sure how it managed to rectify the problem simply by using an image.
Nowadays, of course, I no longer dual boot in the normal way, instead I use
virtual machine software and have installed XP via the virtual machine
software onto Vista.
--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User
Web:
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org
The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
"csanii" <csanii@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:491BA9DB-C6BB-4B0F-BE5B-76E01A04D855@microsoft.com...
>I replaced the MBR and track0 on disk 1 from a backup I had but that did
>not
> allow Win98 to boot either. What I want to be able to have is the disks be
> totally independent of each other so that if I yank 1 out I still have a
> bootable machine for the remaining OS, even if I have to BIOS select the
> disk
> to boot.
>
> Do you know what other files the Vista bootmgr may have
> installed/deleted/changed on the Win98 disk? In theory I should be able to
> just replace those from backup and be ok again since if I select disk 2
> from
> BIOS my Vista boots without issue.
>
> "John Barnett MVP" wrote:
>
>> If you remove the Vista boot loader from the Windows 98 disk then the
>> system
>> will not boot. For that matter neither will your Win 98 disk because the
>> original boot ini file has been overwritten.
>>
>> If you are pl;planning on dual booting Win 98 and Vista why use the BIOS.
>> You can easily get a dual boot menu to allow you to choose which
>> operating
>> system to use. With this in mind the best option is to download the
>> freeware
>> application VistaBootPro (www.vistabootpro.org) Once you have downloaded
>> it,
>> install it on windows Vista then visit this link on my website:
>>
>> http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm
>>
>> All of the information isn't relevant to you but the information that is
>> is
>> under the heading Vista Boot Pro. Read the instructions from this section
>> to
>> add Windows 98 to the dual boot menu of Vista.
>>
>>
>> --
>> John Barnett MVP
>> Associate Expert
>> Windows - Shell/User
>>
>> Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
>> Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org
>>
>> The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
>> kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
>> reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable
>> for
>> any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of
>> the
>> use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
>> mail/post..
>>
>> "csanii" <csanii@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:5335FBD5-3DCA-4667-BEFF-3CF7D9D7E6E2@microsoft.com...
>> >I installed Vista on a 2nd drive as a clean install (instead of
>> >custom).
>> > Unfortunately it wrote the boot manager to my 1st drive so now I can
>> > only
>> > boot Vista up. All I want is to remove the boot manager from the Win98
>> > disk
>> > so I can select which OS to boot using the BIOS. That way if I remove
>> > either
>> > drive from the system I can still have a bootable system.
>> >
>> > Is there a simple and safe way to remove the boot manager from the
>> > Win98
>> > disk#1 without harming the Vista install on Disk #2 ?
>>
>>
C186571-9CF5-4FD3-A843-A74BE78400CF@microsoft.com...
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