Dual-Boot: Daryna & WIN98SE [SOLVED]

[mcurran]

Hello:

I've been working an old customized intel D815EEA2 / D815EPEA2 and want to get the most out of it. To put a long story short: I've spent about three weeks setting up everything, and even ordered a second hard drive to successfully dual-boot Mint and Windows 98SE. Yes!!! Success!!! I finally got it done, and everything was working perfectly...

I have an ATI 3D RAGE LT PRO ENHANCED 2X AGP graphics card and I was desperately trying to enable 3D rendering (Desktop Effects). Among many attemps for a solution, I eventually tried manually selecting my card in the Screens and Graphics application available in my "Daryna" Main Edition distro. This caused problems and my card was no longer recognized after a restart. I could only run Daryna in safe mode, so I decided to do a reinstall of Mint. After the reinstall, the grub loader no longer showed Windows 98 under the "Other Operating Systems" section of the boot menu, but now said Windows 98/ 95/ ME. I tried to load my Windows up, and guess what... It wouldn't work - said something about reloading vbrbackup. I'm assuming this means my mbr was ruined. I tried restoring the mbr with my WIN98SE disk to no avail. According to that cd, the disk doesn't even exist anymore.

Is there any possible way I can get back into my windows? I would much rather reinstall Mint 10 times before having to setup my Windows 98, the way I want it, again - Since It friggin' takes a decade to load up a clean install of Windows... Bye the way, I'm a complete noob, and Mint rocks. I don't want to put all the time I spent so far to waste.

Maybe later someone could help me get those desktop 3d visual effects with a simple answer, instead of building the damn driver from scratch.

[Zwopper]

Try this: http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/ ... kPage.html

[mcurran]

SuperGrubDisk didn't work. I was already able get to and past the Windows splash screen, but then the computer either just hangs on a black screen w/ a blinking white cursor, or displays a strange message about vrbackup and asks to run setup again. It's strange that the Daryna Live CD (Main Edition) configured the grub correctly the first time, but then wouldn't work after a reinstall. I was thinking it might have to do with the Windows Security Updates I added this time around, so I removed all of them, and tried again: Didn't work. I'm going to reformat the second hard drive and do another clean install of the Daryna. We'll see what happens. By the way, both times I went for the dual-boot (successfully and failed), I used the guided option and selected: Use entire disk. I have Windows 98SE on one hard disk, and Daryna on another. I also thought it might be because Windows 98SE might not want to start from the slave position, but that didn't prevent it from loading the first time around...

[Zwopper]

...try to rename win.com on your windows partition to win.old and then start your windows install, it should go quick and all your personal settings and driver should be intact.

Good luck!

[mcurran]

There is no WIN.com folder on my Windows hard drive. Something I did was different this time around, and I think it's because I set the second hard drive to master before installing linux on it, so the automatic install of grub didn't configure for a boot from the slave position. Somehow these configurations determine how to make Windows 98 still think it's on the primary drive. Windows will only successfully load, if I plug it in as master. Is there any way I can edit the grub, so that Windows 98 is set at slave, but still thinks its number one? Or would it just be easier to plug in only Windows 98, fix \mbr, then install linux on the second drive while in the slave position, keeping Windows 98 on master (Will this enable grub to boot on power on, or will it just load windows). I'm not familiar enough with grub, to determine the exact procedure, so I've been doing the runaround forever. Sucks I got it right and then had to reinstall linux and mess everything up. I assume there's an easy way to just type something in grub to make Windows believe it's number one from the slave position, or just reinstall grub from the slave position??? Someone please clear this up for me...

[Zwopper]

There is no WIN.com folder on my Windows hard drive. ...

It's a file, not a folder, but it's hidden, just type:

Code: Select all

 ren win.com win.old

at the DOS-prompt
and reboot with the windows CD loaded...

...don't know about GRUB though, SuperGrub fixed it for me...

[mcurran]

I heard you could map the slave drive in grub, and fool 98 into thinking it was master, but when I went to put-in the code, I noticed it was already there. Then Windows completely failed because I mounted the drive from Linux: I was so frustrated I didn't realize this was the reason why it wasn't loading, and I reformatted. I'm doing a clean reinstall of both OS's. I plan on doing a clean install of WIN98 on my 12GB drive, move that drive to slave, and insert the 80GB drive to master and install Mint. Hopefully this will produce the same results as my first attempt when it worked. I do not remember if this was the exact procedure (when it worked), or if I put the 80GB drive in as slave and installed Linux to that drive, and then switched the drive positions after the install. I'll let you know if it works. I'm getting really tired of this. I should just use Linux alone, but that would defeat the whole purpose of me buying the new drive for this dual boot deal.

[mcurran]

I reinstalled both operating systems and get the same problem again. What a waste of time.

I don't really understand, I completely get how grub works now and the mapping setup looks fine, but for some reason windows 98SE will shows the splash screen, then this grub entry, then doesn't load? Anyone have any suggestions?

title Windows 98 SECOND EDITION
root (hd1,0)
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
map (hd1,0) (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

I've also tried changing root with rootnoverify, putting root entry after mapping entries (does this matter), switching BIOS boot priority (2nd Drive first), and mapping without mentioning which partition. I'm out of ideas...

I still think Windows is not being tricked for some reason, and I've even uninstalled any drivers that would override my BIOS in Windows.

When I installed windows, I installed from the hard disk, so I copied the setup disk D:>WIN98 to C:\WIN98, then ran setup from that (C:\WIN98\SETUP): Does this mean there is an extra partition in there I need to account for somewhere in the boot commands? I didn't think that would matter because I thought control was given to the MBR when you put in chainloader +1, and if this starts up on it's own, then it would when grub passes it, right?

[mcurran]

I got it WORKING, you need to install Mint from the slave position and leave it there. I'm not sure if this is the only way, but I couldn't figure-out or fix Windows to boot up from the slave position after three weeks of online referencing and how to's. I wish I knew it was that easy, I just assumed Linux needed to be the primary hd to load on power-on.

Well it worked for a day, until I ran disk defrag in Windows 98 and went to bed. I woke up to a black screen, flashing cursor and pointer. "Windows security error. You need to restart your computer." Supergrubdisk boots windows, Daryna won't. (Sorry for replying to my own post, but I haven't gotten any help).