Ok, I thought some of you brilliant minds might help me. When I got this PC around when S2 demo came out, I installed XP on it. Started up LFS and framerates were horrible, like 5-8 FPS horrible. I wacked XP off and installed 98SE since I saw XP was using up like 400 mb of my 512 mb ram. So now I'm trying XP out again thinking I'd install it on another separate harddrive. I installed and booted the system with the secondary harddrive only installed. XP works great, I think. I reinstalled the original drive, which is the master and the second drive (with XP installed) as the slave. Now I can't boot to the second drive at all. I don't see it in the list of drives when I boot the PC, but when Win98 starts up, I see the second drive in Windows Explorer. I can select in the bios which drive I want to boot from, but it's not in the normal list where I can move the second drive up above the primary in the list. Am I confusing? PC is a crap HP and I am pretty sure the drives are configured master/slave correctly. I don't know, I don't think I'm making any sense and can't think how to describe my problem to get help.

Well, if you can figure out what I'm talking about, then thanks in advanced for the help, LOL.

Actually I'm trying that right now. I swapped the master/slave designation and booted to XP ok. I just figured I'd jump online and see if there was any response here, because sometimes you guys are quick . I just haven't tried to boot to the other drive yet, which is the original drive now in slave config and with Win98 install. So far, I lost 10 FPS in LFS by going XP (which isn't good when I was originally at 35-40), but I think there are 3 things I still need configured, hardware accelleration clicked down a notch, sound accelleration as well, and directX 9.0c ( I know, don't need it for LFS, but it was on the Win 98 install and I need it for NR2003). Now I just need tooooo waaaaiiiiiit fooooorrrrr mmmmyyyyy ddddiiiiaaaalllluuuuupppp tttoooooo download DirectX zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!

Oh, isn't it wonderful. I thought I had an extra stick of ram I bought for another PC a while back which was wrong for the old computer. I pulled the stick from this PC to see if they were the same, nope. Put the stick back in the slot and now I get absolutely nothing on booting. My monitor turns off and the power LED starts blinking.

On a good note, before I messed with the ram, I got directX9.0c installed, got the hardware and sound accelleration configured like I had with the 98SE install and loaded up LFS. I didn't gain or lose any framerate, but it seemed to be more stable running on XP. I actually had a lot of potential getting my operating system up to the 21st century standards. So, if the ram is toasted, that's $50 I don't have. If I have to get new ram I may as well get 2 sticks. That would be $100. By then, I may as well add just a few more $100's and pick up a whole new PC after the income tax return. But with a monitor, that would be too much. It would suck getting a new PC, yet still run on a 10 yr old 17" monitor that only does maximum 1024x768 at 60 hz refresh. Grrrrrrrr, I hate PC's!!! I hate trying to raise a family on a single income in this world today!!! New PC (necessity for me), new rototiller (necessity for the garden) and now my income tax return is about gone and I've got hospital bills, 3 credit cards, and a loan to pay with it as well.

Btw: You can have XP and 98 on the same drive with no problems at all. BUT:

You must install 98 first and then XP, if you do it the other way around you can say bye bye to your XP installation.

And it should be clear that this only works if you system drive is FAT32

disconnect one of the hard drives, and try boot with the original memory u had in there...

Also how you've installed win98 on one disk and winxp on another drive without the original in there, want work when you try with the two in the system at the same time this is because both disks will have primary disk partitions set to active and only one should be at a time. This is at the operating system (filing system) level not the hardware level you've been looking at...

I'd suggest that (assuming you can delete everything on your xp drive) you boot to an msdos prompt under win98 (press F8 at startup) and then use fdisk.exe to wipe the second hard disk with xp on it, if you can, and then reinstall xp but when it asks you where, direct it to the second hard disk. Can't remember for sure if you can use fdisk under 98 to delete an NTFS partition, if you can't you might have to just have the one disk with xp in your system again and then boot off your xp install disk and delete it from there... ah just had another thought maybe if you boot from your xp install disk from the start you can select the second drive for a fresh install, but first choose to delete the partion on that second drive then set it to install and create a new partition on the secoond drive, that should fix the partions correctly and if IRC will set up a dual boot system automatically as ATHome said the important sequence is to have 98 installed first then install xp second and it should be ok. An easier option would be partition magic but I guess you dont have that

When everything is running right it should initially start booting from the win98 drive (fat32) then ask you if you want to boot 98 or xp... been awhile since I've done one of these so hopefully I've remembered correctly :S you can always goto microsoft website the do a search in the knowledge base under tech support for "win98 xp dual boot" without the inverted commas...

[Edit] If the memory is still giving you probs (not allowing the system to boot) double check all other cards and cables are seated properly, you may have disturbed one and clean the contact points on the memory stick with an eraser (rubber) making sure you leave no dust or rubber filings on the stick before you insert the memory again and don't touch the conacts with your fingers as that leaves a residue that will cause the memory to fail over time...[/edit]

Quote from ATHome :

Btw: You can have XP and 98 on the same drive with no problems at all. BUT:

You must install 98 first and then XP, if you do it the other way around you can say bye bye to your XP installation.

And it should be clear that this only works if you system drive is FAT32

Hmmm... I've done that hundreds of times... Here's how to create a dual boot system the manual way:

So you've got 2 systems booting from different drives...
Make the W98 the primary master drive (the one it boots from)
Boot into W98 and create an Emergency Boot Disk...
Open Notepad and type in this (and exactly this):

L 100 2 0 1
N C:\BOOTSECT.DOS
R BX
0
R CX
200
W
Q

Save this file to the W98 system partition with an easy to type name (like Boots.dmp)

Reboot using the W98 EBD you created.
At the prompt type
DEBUG < C:\BOOTS.DMP
(use the name you just entired for the notepad file)

Check to see if there is a new file called bootsect.dos on the C-drive.

Next, boot up using the Windows XP install CD.
Once the setup loads, choose repair, and enter the recovery console for your Windows XP installation. It should detect it even if it's not on the bootable drive.

At the prompt, type FIXBOOT and press enter.
type Y and enter...
Remove the XP CD, reboot, and you'll have your options including W98 and XP...

Quote :

this is because both disks will have primary disk partitions set to active and only one should be at a time.

The slave active partition will be disabled upon boot, so it should work fine.

Sounds like it would work Tagforce but if he did default install of xp on one drive it would have used ntfs filing system... would that be a problem?
[Edit] Answer it myself :P I don't think it will be a problem as long as the boot disk is fat32 which is the win98 drive all should be well, so follow Tagforces instructions and you should be right [/edit]

Wow, quite a bit of responses this morning. To give all information, I have the computer booting in 98 AND XP (XP on separate harddrive). I started doing it last week, but something messed up and it messed up my 98 installation as well. I'm only doing it for a test as I didn't have luck with XP and LFS (framerates) the first time I tried XP. So this time I pulled my 98 install drive out and installed the extra drive and loaded XP on it. I figured I could create a boot menu later. For now just select in bios which disk to boot from (which works for now). My problem now is just the memory thing. I reinstalled the memory in the slot many times now to see if it wasn't seating correctly or something. All cables are good and nothing is loose/disconnected. My original onboard graphics worked along with having a card installed (they both worked together, ie, I could swap the monitor to either or). So I did pull the card out and try to boot with just the onboard installed just incase something happened to the gfx card (ie, static or something). Can't boot using the onboard with the separate card pulled either. I can drop any of my cards into the older PC to test them out. I'd like to test the ram or test another stick in my computer, but it's hard to find someone around who can help me out swapping ram sticks, whatever. I was hoping to be able to throw it in a PC here at work, but they are all old garbage and don't take DDR. Which means the IT department didn't have any extra sticks laying around that I could toss in mine to see if it will boot. I don't know, probably something stupid and simple, I have to wait until I get home to do anything now.

Thanks for all the responses
Cheers

Another question that I thought of from reading another thread. When I booted to XP, I had to unlock LFS because of the new OS. I had both drives installed and LFS is on the other drive which also holds Win98. So, will I have to unlock LFS each time I switch operating systems and want to run LFS? I guess it doesn't really matter since I think I may have proven to myself that I want XP exclusively. I just wanted to test as I said, last time I tried, I had stinkin 5-8 FPS in LFS on XP. Oh well, finally done at work and gotta get home to fix my current no-boot problem.

From what I can tell about how the LFS unlocks, you just need to unlock it once for each OS.

As for the RAM (if it's not fixed already), clean the slot by blowing hard into it, and maybe even trying a different slot. For some reason when I put some new RAM Sinks on my ram one stick stopped working in slot 0, which was weird but it works in the others. But I can't see the RAM being dead by taking it out unless you was fingering the gold strips, which would just need a nice clean (someone on here, and forgive me for forgetting who) said you can just use a rubber to clean it. So I'd try that.

the silliest way of having a dual boot sys is to let the osses not know of each other...

pro: no need for special instal order, the osses can replace their opposites since NO used files are locked, no special imager is needed. just copy the files AS LONG as it's still the SAME drive (changed partition size never tested) cause else xp won't load since it's looking for a hdd-volume number generated by xp.

contra: u need a bios that can boot-jump from master/slave so no special bootloader is needed

Well, like I said, I'm just trying to test XP as I didn't like it at all the first time I tried it. But this time it works great. So, yea, my OS's don't know each other is there and I didn't want them to. That's why I installed it separately on a second hard drive. If I decided I didn't want it, I could just pull the drive out and scrap it (it's an old left over 6Gig drive). That way nothing on my 98 install would be touched and I could just continue on since it take hours and hours for the stupid thing to reinstall (found hardware, do you want to install, yes, where to look for drivers, here, do you want to install from here, yes, installing from here, OK, hardware installed, OK, reboot to take effect, OK, reboot, found hardware.....and on and on). I probably will end up wacking the 98 install on C: and installing XP on the main drive as soon as I get the PC running again.

I messed around with it last night again and pulled every card I have (gfx, sound, modem, network) and installed in the other PC just to be sure. Everything worked fine in it, so that leaves me with something wrong with ram stick or motherboard. Kids were bothering me and I worked 15 hours yesterday, so I didn't get around to trying to clean the contacts or slot for the ram. I'll try that and if it doesn't work, break down and have to wait until next Thursday payday and pick up another stick. I hope I can make it that long, I'll go crazy at night! I'm not a sit and watch TV kind of guy, have to have my racing at night even if I am lousy at it! Wifey takes over the TV at night now anyways recording soaps all day long on the new satelite DVR and watching them when the kids are in bed.

hit it with a hammer and hope....ive no clue about computors, i cant even spell it right...or can i?/

can't

ps: here is a little sugestion on how to scatter your system

Yippee, I found a stick of RAM to take home and test in my system to see if it will finally boot again. Problem is, it is PC2700 DDR and mine is PC2100 DDR. If I'm not mistaken, I think that is backwards compatible and it should work in my PC. Can anyone tell me that would know? I think my RAM is 266 MHz and the PC2700 is 333 MHz. Oh well, I'm excited to test it to see and get my computer running slightly for the weekend anyways (it's only a 256 stick).

go > bios > ram voltage=auto
sticky it in, start comp.
if doesn't work, check fsb speed
if work then max @266 mhz

that's it either it works or not, but if it's a damaged module in the first place then you can damage your board as well.

If you set the ram to SPD and set all the timings to the laxest the DDR333 will downscale to DDR266.

Ok, here's my update, but first to you two on the two posts above. I have an HP computer which means NOTHING is configurable in the bios. This is why I'd never buy a PC from HP, Gateway, Dell, Compaq, or any of the "off the shelf PC" thieves again. The only thing I can do is choose the drive I want to boot from and disable my onboard audio and lan. I can't even disable the onboard graphics! I can only tell it to use PCI as the primary graphics. Anyway, I installed the PC2700 ram and tried to boot and again, got nothing. I don't even see the startup screen so I CAN'T go into the bios. The monitor goes into standby like it's not recieving a signal as soon as I power up the PC. I don't know, I may just buy a whole new MB, processor, PSU, and Ram since this thing was hit by the power surge (long time ago). Something finally went out and it may just be easier to replace everything than to figure out what it is. The sound, modem, gfx, and network cards have all already been replaced, so......

Thanks everyone, hopefully it won't be long until I see you all in the servers again!

m8 I see your still having trouble even with the mem from work...

Can you get to bios setup? if you cant then, before you jump to conclusions... disconnect all your drives (floppies, hard disk and cd etc.) take out all your pci and isa cards enable the onboard vga again and put back in your original mem proably even set all your bios settings back to default and then see if your system will fire (as in let you get into bios setup screen) you may even need to clear the cmos (bios settings) from the jumper on the mother board if you still can't access the bios setup.

If you are able to get into the bios setup then disconnect the xp hd and only have the win98 hd connected in your system, like above take out all your addon cards and enable your onboard vga, go into bios setup and set it all to default. Try to boot the system (if it starts to load win98 turn off the computer imidiately so it doesn't recognise hardware changes) if it did start to load win98 though you have sucess... next put back in your vga card and disable the onbaord on again, try boot the system (same as above), if it works do the same for each of the remaining cards...

tell us how it went and we can celebrate or go further into it...

[edit]I was writing this while you posted so follow the first section seeing how you can't get into the setup screen at all, definately clear the bios settings by the onboard "clear cmos" jumper, normaly a 3 pin arangement... with some m/b you simply change the jumper position for a few seconds and it done for others you have to change the jumper position then boot with it in that position[/edit]

no, the mem upgrade HAS to work as long as it's not damaged anything or itself.

it's like stick it in, and goback to work.
anyting else points out to a serious problem...

Yup, that's one of the problems. I can't even see the startup screen to get into the bios. I just tried to boot with everything gutted out of the case. Only thing that was in the case / connected was the MB and ram. I can't disable/enable the onboard graphics, only select the primary. I know the modem and sound card was fried. This machine has always given me little problems. Hmm, I checked my other posts and didn't realize I didn't explain the history of this PC here. Must have been another forum I've posted in. In short, I got it from someone who said they had a power surge and if I could get it running, it was mine (that was 8-9 months ago, round the time S2 demo came out). So I found in installing XP the first time, it locked up halfway through the drivers install. Thats when I figured the modem and audio on the MB was fried. I disabled them in the bios and got it booted. New separate sound and modem cards and I was good to go. I always had little annoyances, but I think that was from being on dialup and never doing Windows Update stuff. It just took too long. Anyways, I've been using it for 9 months racing LFS until now when I can't even boot into the bios. That's why I'm thinking just gut it and get a new MB, processor, and PSU. That's the only 3 things I have left that hasn't been replaced (well, cd drives and such, but they are all ok). I'm on a very very tight budget and don't really want to, but because of the powersurge history, it may be best and easiest. Heck, I already have the modem, sound, graphics, so, I don't know much about MB's, but I see a combo deal for $239 that would upgrade me from the P4 2.5 to an AMD Athalon 64 3700 and give me options to configure whatever I want in bios, unlike HP where you can't change anything. Holy crap, I'd even have a manual for the motherboard!! Try getting that from HP, LOL.

And PS. sorry bout the unexpaination about the powersurge history before you all racked your brains for me, hehe. I thought I mentioned it, but it was somewhere else that I asked about all this as well.

When you say you get nothing, is the power supply working? Do you see any indication of power on the m/b i.e. fans kick in for a second when you first connect the power or any LEDs... also look for any socketed chips on the m/b and push them firmly back in (sometimes they can work there way out over time) do you get any beeps or noises from the motherboard when you try boot?
Also tack out the memory and try boot just with the power supply and m/b, do you get any beeps?

Ok, when I say nothing, I mean on the monitor. When I power up the PC, the LED on the front (PC) lights, fans turn on (only have 1 fan on back of PC), harddrive starts to spin, no sound (I pulled soundcard and have onboard disabled as it was fried). I imagine I would get beeps on the MB, but I've never heard any or remember hearing any ever before. The monitor is turned on and you can see the screen is on but nothing displaying. When I power up the PC, the monitor turns black and the LED starts to blink like it would going into standby mode when there's no connection to a PC. I've tried with my ram installed (both slots), working ram from work installed (both slots), and no ram installed. I've tried with all my cards installed (gfx, sound, modem) and pulled them all. I've tried with win98 drive installed, XP drive installed, no drive installed. I've tried with other monitor connected. I've booted both 98 and XP drives installed in old PC, so harddrives are OK. I'm also currently using the monitor on the old PC now, so it's ok. I've installed the powersupply from the old PC in it and tried and still, nothing on the monitor. I tried to reset the bios, I found a set of pins that was labeled "reset" and jumped them (I don't have a manual as HP doesn't believe there is anyone in this world as smart as their tech service that may be capable of openning up the case). I also pulled and reinstalled the battery thinking that may reset the bios as well. One thing I didn't notice on all this is if the keyboard LED's light up or blink when powering up. Like I said my last post there, I forgot to mention here that this PC was hit by a power surge little less than a year ago and I got it working. A friend gave it to me to see if I could get it working. I am thinking about either just puckering up and buying a new PC or just replacing the MB/CPU since that really is the only things left to replace. It's just I really don't have the cash to do that and probably won't for years to come. Wifey doesn't like that idea, since she's the one who sends the bills, but we were talking about it. Only problem I have is then paying for a new monitor (may as well upgrade from my 17 inch) since I'd be limited to 1024x768 with this one and would have a MUCH more capable PC.

On the note of replacing this PC, can I get some feedback/suggestions of what would be better (financially vs. better all around). I currently have:

1-2 month old PCI (not express) Diamond Radeon 9250 256 mb graphics
512 PC2100 DDR ram (if it still works)
Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (I use headphones)
80 Gb hard drive
10 yr old 17 inch CRT which is kind of slightly blurry (been trying to adjust focus, but can't get it perfect anymore)

2 suggestions on what I'd like to buy. Note, I know nothing about MB's and am just going on price/most popular on the site

Financially feasable to upgrade current PC, motherboard/CPU combo. In short it's an Athalon 64 3700 socket 754 (I don't know difference between 764 and 939 socket). 2 slots for DDR 400 MHz Ram (I believe configurable to use my current 266 MHz ram stick which for financial reasons I'd try to reuse), AGP 4X/8X (financially I'd use my current gfx card). With this I could possibly pick up a better monitor as well.

Here's link: http://www.tigerdirect.com/app ... EdpNo=1546437&CatId=0

Edit: Here's the link to the list of MB/CPU's. I saw an Asus motherboard/Athalon 64 3700 after posting this that is the same price. Basically I'd think of any of the $239 combos with the Athalon 64 CPU, not Sempron (I'm assuming Sempron is like the Celeron of Intel, correct me if I'm wrong).
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Recs=10&Nav=|c:1181|&Sort=0

Or I could buy something like this. Purchasing an entirely new PC, I'd have very limited funds available and I'm not even sure if I could do this. It would net me a lower CPU than the above MB/CPU combo, but would get me a PCI-e GeForce 6200 256 MB. I'm in no shape to upgrade any component it this system financially, it's configured as low as I could there. I'd probably have to stick with my current monitor on this option. This would also net me another 80 G harddrive which I could then install my current 80 gig as a second drive.

Here's link if it works: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/S ... aspx?mid=136&c=530777

Thanks

A final thanks anyways to those who posted here to try and help me out. I no longer have a problem with that computer as I'm now sitting on a new Athalon 64 3500 with a gig of RAM . This is awesome as, like I said before, it's the first PC I've purchased since the old original Pentium 75 way back in 1995. It came with Windows XP Multimedia Edition as well. I may have some questions in the future on Windows XP, as in right now, my Momo is stuck in combined axis for throttle and brake (in the windows gaming options with the 4.60 drivers). I think I saw something before on here about that, so a searching I will go. this is my first experience with XP other than the install on the other PC for half an hour before it fried. They didn't make 17 inch monitors this big back when I got the one I was using either. Funny how this 17 inches is bigger than 17 inches 10 years ago. Funny also how I now have 15 FPS compared to the 35-45 I had with the other PC, hmmm. I think I have some messing about to do to figure out why. One thing I don't like is it did come with onboard graphics with an ATI chip sharing 256 mb of the system memory. But, I figured with a gig of RAM, that wouldn't hamper it too bad for now. I have to keep a graphics card in mind in the future, just can't pull it off right now. Have to install the sound card as well, since that isn't all that old. The sound currently is of course, onboard.

Now, just waiting to see if I can get an unlock for this weekend. Until then, I'm stuck in demo world. E-mail was sent, so, we'll see.

Laters!!!!