Letter Assignment when dual booting win98 & XP

[dencorso]

Now you can go even further, and use the Win XP Disk Management to reassign the letters of all partitions, except the boot one, for them to take the same letters as you have in Win 98. Go to Control Panel -> Admnistrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, then right-click over each partition and use Change Drive Letter and Paths... It may be necessary to assign a temporary letter, say, Z to a partition, in order to liberate the letter it's already using, so that you then, after rebooting, can assign it to another partition. Repeat until you've reassigned all letters to your satisfaction and then change the letter of partiton Z to it's intended final letter. It takes some time to perform all the changes, but the result is very rewarding.

[mntview64]

Well I guess I spoke to soon. Installing went well and I can duel boot now and my drive letters are fine in win98. But I do have a big problem NOW! I purchased Windows XP Pro w/SP3 from a seller on ebay. After the windows activation, it pops up, this is not a genuine copy, this could be pirvate software. So it looks like I wasted the $70 I paid for this CD. I tried contacting the seller with no response, and now my 45 days to file a complaint with ebay and paypal is to late. I have read about using cracks to get it to activate, but I don't feel safe doing this. I would rather have a genuine copy, so I know all the updates and downloads will work.

My question is, when I uninstall this pirvate software, what happens to the duel booting setup. I guess I will have to reformat the partition I installed the pirate OS to, in order to remove it. I believe though, it will leave all the duel-boot files on my C: root. Should I remove those file also? Or when I get a legal copy of XP, and install it, will it just rewrite those files? If I don't remove those files, will I still be able to boot into Win98?

[submix8c]

???

FWIW, you may be able to contact MS and get a replacement (with legit key) by reporting the "fake" one. However, you will probably have to pay "something" for the replacement. Also, check the CD and the MS "how to tell" page (holograms and all). Was it in an unopened package (also, check the CoA against MS "how-to-tell")?

[mntview64]

???

FWIW, you may be able to contact MS and get a replacement (with legit key) by reporting the "fake" one. However, you will probably have to pay "something" for the replacement. Also, check the CD and the MS "how to tell" page (holograms and all). Was it in an unopened package (also, check the CoA against MS "how-to-tell")?

I checked the update link that said to make this copy legal (geniune) from Microsoft, and the kit to make it legal, costs $149.00. Which they said I have to fill out the pirate software form and send the CD to them, but they would make my copy legal and send me a new CD.

This was in a sealed package, but wasn't in a box. This was suppose to be an OEM copy, and had the COA and OEM sticker on the book. The CD had the hologram on it. After I got the pirate warning, I checked the hologram closer and I could see that it was a sticker placed on the CD. Then I checked the Setupp.ini file on the CD, and it had the PID=76487 270 number in the file. If I am not wrong, this is the Corp. version (270) when it should have said OEM instead of the 270. So I have been check the internet stores to see if anyone had a close-out sale for Win XP Pro. that cost less than the $149.00 Micorsoft wants to charge.

[jds]

BTW, if you get phantom drive enumeration or other LBA problems

in W9X, you might want to try my revised patch for V7.10 'IO.SYS'

(based on original patch by Steven Saunderson), available at :

http://jds.com-t.com/general.html

@jds: You say in your read.me:

However, one of Steven's changes were causing me other LBA problems, and since I didn't agree with it, I reversed it.

I've determined that the change you reverted is (quoting Steven Saunderson's original w98bug.txt):

* Offset 2072 was 04 now 00 (erroneous set of LBA flag for next par[tition]).

Would you please elaborate on what problems did that particular change have, and why do you consider it a misfix?

Sorry again for the delayed reply.

Anyway, the misfix is as follows ... When an LBA extended partition is defined, all logical partitions within in should/must use LBA addressing, even if they're not explicitly defined as LBA types. With the above-mentioned change, IO.SYS will look only at the type ID of the logical partition itself, ignoring the type ID (and hence addressing mode) of the extended partition that contains it. If the logical partition in question is not wholely within the 7.8G CHS limit, disaster (due to wrap-around)!

Joe.