Dual boot W2k, W98SE prob with invalid system disk

[Jon_J]

Sorry bout the header to this msg, not sure what happened, it should read:
Dual boot W2k, W98SE prob with "invalid system disk"

I have Win98SE installed, then installed Windows 2000 Professional and made a dual-boot configuration. I used C:\ for Win98, and E:\ for W2k.

Everything was working fine until last night.
when I boot, there are 2 choices, Windows 2000 Professional or Windows, (w98)
When I select Windows 2000 Professional, it boots and runs fine.
When I select Windows, for windows 98, I get "Invalid System Disk" hit any key.

I went online in W2k and scanned for viruses, I didn't have any.
I tried W2k repair method using W2k boot CD-ROM and emergency repair disk. I used the repair option, That didn't work either. Somewhere along the line during repair, the repair screen says it can only repair Windows 2000. So I guess I cannot repair my W98 system boot files with W2k repair.
Do I need to try to re-install W98?
I have read several times in a dual-boot configuration that W98 setup will overwrite critical W2k files and
(W98 should be installed 1rst, then W2k), not the other way around.

Can anyone point me in the right direction about my Error and dual boot?
I use Win98 more often to surf the web, (safer than W2k) and all my CDR, DVDR apps are on W98.

Thank you for reading this,
Jon

[dodecahedron]

Sorry bout the header to this msg, not sure what happened, it should read:
Dual boot W2k, W98SE prob with "invalid system disk"

if you edit the first post in the topic (the above one) and you edit the Subject then it changes the Subject (header as you called it) of the whole topic too.

I have read several times in a dual-boot configuration that W98 setup will overwrite critical W2k files and (W98 should be installed 1rst, then W2k), not the other way around.

yes, i think this is true. so if you re-install win98 you'll have to reinstall win2K too.
(unless you do the re-install of win98 in a smart way the doesn't intefere with the boot setup. i'm sure it can be done but i don't know how, sorry)

[Jon_J]

Thank you for your reply dodecahedron,

I didn't think I could edit the header properly. It did work though.
I have tried this on other forums and all it did was edit a sub-header.


I hope I don't have to re-install both OS's
I'm searching around for a solution, I hope I can just replace some corrupt W98 system files, but will make sure I'm using a "proven" method before I do this.

Jon

[dodecahedron]

well, sorry i can't help you out. good luck though.

[Jon_J]

dodecahedron,
I have it working now. I just re-installed Win98 on top of itself. I didn't use any switches. It installed faster than a full install. It seemed like it "knew" that most of the files were already there.

When I tried to use Win2k, it seemed to work fine, but I went ahead and used the "Repair" option.

I'm not sure about the W2k repair option, as it detects files that aren't the same as the original CD-ROM, (I have SP4 installed).

I let repair replace all the files that it found to be different than the original ones, then rebooted.
Now I assumed that the repair option, replaced the SP4 files, so I re-installed SP4 too.

Jon

[dodecahedron]

well, seems i was wrong! anyway it worked out better for you.
glad you got things working to your liking.