Win98SE Drive Letter's Messed Up w/ Win2K & NTFS

[Poontos]

I have 7 partitions:

C: 1GB (BOOT DRIVE) FAT32
D: 6GB (WIN2KPRO) NTFS
E: 4GB (WIN98SE) FAT32
F: 6GB (STUFF)
ETC.

The partitions were all FAT32 at first, so installed Win98SE on drive E:, configured it, installed APPS, etc.

Now I just installed Win2K Pro on the D: drive and had it formatted to NTFS.

Now Win98 is fubar'd cause it doesn`t see the D: drive, so I think it thinks Win98 is installed on D: instead of E:, make sense?

How do I fix this without re-installing either OS's? Can I just change the drive letter specification in Win98 to get it's brains back?


Thanks!

 

[Slikkster]

A fine mess you've gotten yourself into laddie...heheh...there is an easy way but it will cost ya. sysinternals.com has some very cool utilities that bring much more flexibility to ntfs than microsoft ever imagined. They have one called "NTFS for Win98"...it's $49.00, but allows Win98 to see and work with all NTFS drives just like Winnt/2k can. Otherwise, you have some thorny issues to deal with and I'm not sure you'd be successful without a lot of headaches. So, if $49.00 is worth saving yourself some crummy work reinstalling, I'd go for it if I were you.


NTFS for Win98

They also have a try-before-you-buy option, which might give you read-only access, but in your case, that might be just fine and dandy...all you want is for Win9x to see the right drive, so try it out first and see if it works.

 

[slatt01]

Another option is to use Partition Magic and convert the NTFS partition back to Fat32.

 

[BadThad]

Yea it makes sense, win9x can't see an NTFS drive. Once again, Slikkster is correct (...and LMAO at his comment), it certainly is one fine mess. hehehehehe

 

[Poontos]

It's not like it's an uncommon situation.

Well, I`m not going to spend any money to fix this.

Although, I'd be willing to fix it and spend some time on it.

Any other suggestions.


Slikkster,

Thanks for the suggestions. Although, if I can`t get into Windows 98, how am I suppose to install this sysinternals stuff?

 

[Slikkster]

Well here's what you can do for now. From Win2K, edit your c:\msdos.sys file. It's a read-only file, so right-click on it first and choose Properties, then uncheck the read-only box.

Now, once in msdos.sys, you can edit the parameters to tell Win98 where to find it's files.
I have to warn ya though that while this may work to get you in your Win98, all your program shortcuts and other registry pointers will probably be messed up. So, I would consider this just a temporary fix and I would definitely install the read-only demo of NTFS for Win98.

If you choose not to do that, you can probably use Norton Utilities Windoctor to fix your registry pointers (it will search through the registry and find all the shortcuts/pointers that are messed up).

So, no matter what route you decide to take, this is what i would do to get into Win98:

Boot to Win2K
Go to the c:\ folder and right-click on msdos.sys and from Properties, uncheck read-only.
Close Properties
Doubleclick on msdos.sys to open up notepad.
Edit the following lines:



WinBootDir=D:\Windows (changing this from E:\Windows)

WinDir=D:\Windows (changing this from E:\Windows)

HostWinBootDrv=C (does not need to be changed)

Once you do this, Windows 98 should be able to boot up. However, again, for consistency's sake, I'd recommend you go ahead and install the DEMO (read-only and free version) of NTFS for Win98. Once you do that, try setting your msdos.sys back to the E:\ references and try a reboot into Windows. To install NTFS for Win98, you have to run the executable you download, then run the configuration program from the start menu's NTFS for Win98 menu.

One other thing, make sure your pagefile is not any other drive other than C:\ for now...

If you choose not to install NTFS for Win98, then I would suggest running Windoctor or some other good registry cleaner that will offer to make the appropriate changes to your shortcuts. Good luck.

 

[SemperFi]

Since you don't want to spend any money and you just installed 2000. Reinstall 2000 this time use fat32 98 will read it and your shortcuts will go back to normal.

The more you use 2000 the less you will find yourself using 98.

 

[Poontos]

Thanks mon!

Yah I have been using Win2K since Beta 3. I use it 98% of the time. Just need Win98 for some games I want to play that I haven`t played in ages.

I really want to use NTFS though... hmmm...

Know of any free registry programs that would fix up my Win98?

 

[Slikkster]

You can try this freeware app...it's supposed to flag all registry errors and let you decide what to do with them, so hopefully it will flag program pointers, and shortcuts, too.

Freeware Registry Cleaner

With the free demo of NTFS for Win98, though, you shouldn't need to do the registry cleaning (at least not for the bad program pointers)...it should set your system back up to where you want it to be in terms of hard drive lettering as Win98 will now see all drives and letter them accordingly.