I have win XP on C:\ and 98 on D:\. After running bootpart it created D:\BOOTSECT.W98 and added the line:

D:\BOOTSECT.W98="Windows 98 Second Edition" /win95

-to XP's boot.ini.

However, if you select 98 from the startup menu, it displays that it either can't find <Windows Directory>\system32\Hal.dll or it is corrupt. I'm guessing this is not as simple as copying XP's Hal.dll to 98's system32 folder... So, what's wrong with it now?

... "Oh noes!" ...

Read post #12 by jaclaz above. It explains it all...

Is this your problem, by chance?

OF COURSE the C: drive (First Active Primary partition) must use a FAT filesystem.

And here's the topic that prompted the post -

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=118623

Edited March 14, 200917 yr by submix8c

I cannot see where it is reported the filesystem used by Zoinkity on his C:\ drive.

Apart from the above and maybe other problems, the point is that BOOT.INI (or if you prefer NTLDR) does not "traverse" drives.

D:\BOOTSECT.W98

is, as seen by NTLDR, "a suffusion of yellow" :

http://www.thateden.co.uk/dirk/

Provided that the created bootsector is "correct", it MUST reside on C:\

As well the IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM , as well as AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS MUST reside on C:\ (read on First Primary Active partition).

These latter are NOT negotiable, it's the way DOS boots.

(for the sake of simplicity, I am lying , COMMAND.COM can also be somewhere else if it's position is specified in config.sys)

As hinted before, the use of chainloading bootsectors through BOOT.INI is the "old" way to do it, nowadays it is advised to chainload grub4dos' grldr from BOOT.INI and from it chainload directly the kernel file (IO.SYS) bypassing the bootsector alltogether, and offering a wide number of alternate methods to boot, including int his particular case, and IF the C:\ partition is NTFS, booting from a floppy image and then continue booting from D:\ )

Forum:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showforum=66

Guide:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5187

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Method #5:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/...ll.htm#method05

jaclaz

Ah, so that's it. Well, concidering my BIOS allows you to mash the ESC key to select the boot drive, it doesn't seem worth the effort to do anything intricate. Thanks for the explaination though.