How to Dual-Boot Windows 9X/Me and
2000 Pro
last updated: 6/10/01
Introduction. The purpose of
this article is to provide step-by-step procedures for installing both Windows
9X/Me and Windows 2000 Pro on the same hard disk drive so that either operating
system can be selected from a menu when the computer first starts/boots-up. Actually,
a computer can be configured to boot Windows 2000, Windows NT, either Windows
95 or Windows 98, and MS-DOS. It cannot be configured to boot multiple
versions of Windows 9X (Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, and Me) because they use the
same boot file; however, there are third party utilities which can do it. Install
MS-DOS first, to multiple boot Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 95 or Windows
98, with MS-DOS. This article will show how to dual-boot Windows 98,
98 SE, or Me with Windows 2000 Professional. Multiple-boot configurations
with Windows NT and Windows 95, etc. are implemented in a similar fashion.
Step-by-Step Instructions.
1. See our How
to Install the Windows 98 Upgrade on a New Hard Disk Drive, How
to Install Windows Me, and How to Build a Computer with an
AMD Socket A Athlon or Duron Processor: Part
8 - Prepare the Hard disk Drive and Part
9 - Install Windows and Motherboard Drivers for instructions
on partitioning a hard disk drive and installing Windows.
2. Partition your hard disk so that
you have a separate partition for each operating system. Or, partition
your drive so it has one partition for Windows 9X, SE, or Me (we'll call
it Win 9X from now on) and enough free space (unpartitioned space) for the
installation of Windows 2000 (we'll call it Win 2K for short).
Windows Me was already installed on my
30 GByte drive. It had two partitions and 4 GBytes of free space. I
installed Win 2K into the free space. The Win 2K installation partitioned
and formatted the free space. This will be described later in this
article.
If you are going to
do this procedure with a disk drive that already has data on it, I
strongly recommend that you back-up your data. I didn't. Proceed
at your own risk.
3. Install Win 9X first. If
you install it after installing Win 2K it will overwrite the C:\BOOT.INI
file you will not be able to dual-boot.
4. Boot to Win 9X.
5. Insert the Win 2K CD in your CD-ROM
drive.
6. It should autostart and display the
following message:
This CD-ROM contains a newer versions of Windows
than the one you are presently using. Would you like to upgrade to
Windows 2000?
7. Click Yes (we will not actually
upgrade Win 9X).
8. This may result in the following
error:
The option to upgrade will not be available
at this time because Setup was unable to load the file
c:\WINDOWS\UpgDlls\w95upg.dll\WIN9XUPG\W95UPG.DLL
The system cannot find the file specified.
Ignore the error and click OK.
9. This will produce the following message:
Welcome to the Windows 2000 Setup Wizard....
What do you want to do?
o Upgrade...
o Install a new copy of Windows 2000 (Clean Install) ...
Select the second choice and click Next.
Next >
|
