Post by BigDave on Feb 3, 2007 17:48:25 GMT -5
How To Setup A “Dual-Boot” Machine
A dual- boot installation is not easy for most folks UNLESS they would never hesitate to take the side cover off their towers and muck around with the insides of their computers. IMHO setting up a dual-boot is just a shade more difficult than switching out a power supply, or upgrading a videocard/soundcard.
Most people now run versions of Windows XP and in most cases need to have an older operating system to run an old program. Such is the case with Dirt Track Racing Sprint Cars. It needs Windows 98 to run properly because that was the OS it was designed to run on.
If your computer was purchased at a local electronics store and has a valid warranty in place, you probably need to stop reading this and forget the whole idea. But if your computer is out of warranty and it’s major function is playing your games, Read On McDuff!
We will proceed with these instructions based on the following assumptions (read carefully). You are now running some version of Windows XP or Windows 2000 and want to also boot to Windows98 to run older programs.
To start, you will need the following:
1 – A grounding strap, so you don’t fry your internal components with static electricity.
2 – A small HD (30Gigs or less) with the SAME interface connection as your existing drive(s). (most computers will have IDE interface cables of the flat ribbon type)
3 – All the Windows98 version DRIVERS for your entire system hardware.
(off your system CD or found on the web, see #5)
NOTE: The CD that came with your machine might help, but don’t count on it.
4 – One of the following: An open IDE connector on the motherboard (best), or a IDE cable with multiple hard drive connections (choice #2).
5 – The makes & model numbers of ALL your hardware devices.
(you can just print a detailed view of your “device manager” or similar)
6 – A space in your tower bays for the new hard drive
7 – One ton of patience (you’ll need every ounce).
“Proceed BigDave, I’m not Skeerd!”
Windows98 runs a FAT (File Allocation Table) file system, this is what the DTRSC game was designed to play on. Windows2000 and XP are based on the NT (New Technology) file system which was originally a server OS designed mainly for stability when running business software.
The DTRSC game is not compatible with the NT system, and so we are gonna add a 20th century hard drive (lol) to your machine so we can have our DTRSC and still run rFactor and all the other new games too!
After procuring your small hard drive and cable to hook it to your motherboard, dig up your copy of your Windows98 CD & floppy. The 1.4MB floppy diskette has the basic drivers to bring to life your CD drives and to help format the new drive. If your computer does not have a floppy drive, I don’t know how you can do this.
Someone smarter than me might help with this but the floppy disk was the way you had to start the install for Windows98
If you are lucky enough to have purchased a drive that is pre-formatted with one single FAT32 partition, you are way ahead of the game at this point, but we are going to proceed assuming you bought brand new from the store.
If you purchased a USED drive, then I have no idea what’s on it our how it’s formatted, so just proceed with the install as if it were brand new.
Burn a CD with ALL the drivers you found from the web. You’ll need this during the installation of Windows98 on to the new drive. If the CD that came with your system has Windows98 drivers on it, then your all set at this point. Please don’t bother proceeding PAST this point, if the drivers are not ready. It would be a waste of time. 90% of this battle is PREPARATION!
HARDWARE INSTALLATION
Power off your machine using the OS. Shut down ALL other machines hooked to the tower (monitors, printers, speakers, modems, routers, steering wheels, etc). You should have a ALL your components plugged into a surge protector device, if you don’t, you are taking a huge chance of your Power Co. ruining your stuff!
Kill the power to the surge protector OR un-plug ALL devices at this time.
While watching your pretty lights on the front of the tower, push the button you normally use to fire up your machine. The lights should come on just for an instant dissipating the stored electrical energy in the capacitors of the motherboard and other devices hooked to it. Now plug in your tower ONLY, to a properly grounded outlet to ground the tower while we install the hardware.
Open the side cover of your box and set it aside. Put on your wrist strap and clip onto a spot on the tower frame (low and out of your way) so you can reach inside without tangling up in the cord. Now your motherboard and other components will be protected from static discharges that could damage them.
Disabling Your Existing Hard Drive
At this point you want your computer to think that the hard drive you’re installing, is the only one hooked to the motherboard, so you must disconnect the interface cable from your existing HARD DRIVES to force the machine to recognize only the new hard drive. DO NOT unhook the interface cables to any of your optical drives or the floppy drive.
If your using a multiple drive cable to hook two hard drives in series, (slave & master) just remove the IDE cable entirely at this time.
Mount your new drive in an empty bay in the tower, only touching the sides of the drive. Oils from your skin may cause damage to the drive components on the exposed underside of most IDE hard drives. NOTE: Take into consideration the interface cables and how your going to eventually re-hook ALL your drives back to the motherboard.
Sometimes it’s best to re-locate the existing drive to a different bay to make the cables work without twisting them.
Once the new hard drive and the existing drives are fastened to the tower bays, let’s try to plug the new drive’s IDE interface cable to the motherboard. Besides your cable for the optical drives and floppy, no other HARD DRIVES should be connected at this time. NOTE: the power plugs don’t matter because the board can’t “see” the drives unless the interface cable is connected to the motherboard.
With the cover still off, plug back in all your components (or switch on your surge protector) and let’s get ready to cuss up a storm. lol
When the computer boots up for the first time you need to press the button that grants you access to your BIOS and check to see if the new drive is recognized by the system.
If the drive is listed in the BIOS, we’re about halfway home. If you can’t “see” the new hard drive yet, and the other optical & floppy drives are visible, then something is wrong about the interface cable install and you need to get some personal answer from me.
Installing Windows98
Assuming the new hard drive, the optical, and floppy drive are all being recognized by the BIOS, then it’s time to put your Windows98 floppy disk in it’s drive, close the BIOS without saving and reboot your computer.
When your machine boots up, the program on the floppy disk will check your hard drive and it will then tell you the information you need to proceed with the FORMATTING of the new hard drive. Follow the prompts in the program to format your new drive. You will be instructed to reboot when finished and then the program will come back after startup and tell you the disk has no partition. Tell the program to partition the drive with a single partition on the FAT32 file system and go get a cool drink while it’s working.
After this is done you will be prompted to reboot. When the machine comes back online, it’s time to load the OS CD in the CD-ROM drive. The OS install takes some time too, so go get a snack to have with your cold drink. lol
After Windows is installed, you go through that series of reboots while your hardware is located and the drivers are installed. Use the CD’s from your machine or the one you burned with the drivers you found and get ALL your hardware up and running. Windows98 has a Device Manager found by right clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop, then choosing Properties at the bottom of the drop down window.
You’re finished installing drivers when the Device Manager has no more little yellow exclamation points in the list. If you get all but a couple of, I’ll see if I can be of further help. After this is done, it’s time to shut down Windows98 and prepare to go back into the tower and work again. Go back up to the Proceed BigDave section above and redo those safety measures for static electric charges.
Combining Hard Drives On Your Motherboard
Depending on how many IDE ports you have on your motherboard, you could just plug back in your XP drive, then plug in your 98 drive using an open IDE port with a separate cable for the installation of a single drive. This is the best way.
If you only have two IDE ports available and your optical drive, or drives,
occupies one and your hard drive occupies the other, then your old hard drive must share it's port with you new drive via a multiple drive ribbon cable with two plugs on it (a master and a slave).
If you have a RAID card or RAID is already on your motherboard just follow the instructions for adding drives to the RAID system. Test your dual-boot system by rebooting and using the BIOS to change which hard drive is the boot drive. I’ve labeled mine so I know which one to chose in the BIOS to get the OS I’m trying to run. Once you can boot back and forth between operating systems, download your DTRSC to the 98 side and test out the game. If everything’s all right, load your patches and any other games or programs (Ventrilo) you want to run with DTRSC.
BigDave, I Need Help!
If ya get stuck, just PM through the message board and I’ll see if I can help out. Hopefully with a little hard work and a few dollars spent, we can get a few more people up and running dual boots a go back to having some REAL fun.
A dual- boot installation is not easy for most folks UNLESS they would never hesitate to take the side cover off their towers and muck around with the insides of their computers. IMHO setting up a dual-boot is just a shade more difficult than switching out a power supply, or upgrading a videocard/soundcard.
Most people now run versions of Windows XP and in most cases need to have an older operating system to run an old program. Such is the case with Dirt Track Racing Sprint Cars. It needs Windows 98 to run properly because that was the OS it was designed to run on.
If your computer was purchased at a local electronics store and has a valid warranty in place, you probably need to stop reading this and forget the whole idea. But if your computer is out of warranty and it’s major function is playing your games, Read On McDuff!
We will proceed with these instructions based on the following assumptions (read carefully). You are now running some version of Windows XP or Windows 2000 and want to also boot to Windows98 to run older programs.
To start, you will need the following:
1 – A grounding strap, so you don’t fry your internal components with static electricity.
2 – A small HD (30Gigs or less) with the SAME interface connection as your existing drive(s). (most computers will have IDE interface cables of the flat ribbon type)
3 – All the Windows98 version DRIVERS for your entire system hardware.
(off your system CD or found on the web, see #5)
NOTE: The CD that came with your machine might help, but don’t count on it.
4 – One of the following: An open IDE connector on the motherboard (best), or a IDE cable with multiple hard drive connections (choice #2).
5 – The makes & model numbers of ALL your hardware devices.
(you can just print a detailed view of your “device manager” or similar)
6 – A space in your tower bays for the new hard drive
7 – One ton of patience (you’ll need every ounce).
“Proceed BigDave, I’m not Skeerd!”
Windows98 runs a FAT (File Allocation Table) file system, this is what the DTRSC game was designed to play on. Windows2000 and XP are based on the NT (New Technology) file system which was originally a server OS designed mainly for stability when running business software.
The DTRSC game is not compatible with the NT system, and so we are gonna add a 20th century hard drive (lol) to your machine so we can have our DTRSC and still run rFactor and all the other new games too!
After procuring your small hard drive and cable to hook it to your motherboard, dig up your copy of your Windows98 CD & floppy. The 1.4MB floppy diskette has the basic drivers to bring to life your CD drives and to help format the new drive. If your computer does not have a floppy drive, I don’t know how you can do this.
Someone smarter than me might help with this but the floppy disk was the way you had to start the install for Windows98
If you are lucky enough to have purchased a drive that is pre-formatted with one single FAT32 partition, you are way ahead of the game at this point, but we are going to proceed assuming you bought brand new from the store.
If you purchased a USED drive, then I have no idea what’s on it our how it’s formatted, so just proceed with the install as if it were brand new.
Burn a CD with ALL the drivers you found from the web. You’ll need this during the installation of Windows98 on to the new drive. If the CD that came with your system has Windows98 drivers on it, then your all set at this point. Please don’t bother proceeding PAST this point, if the drivers are not ready. It would be a waste of time. 90% of this battle is PREPARATION!
HARDWARE INSTALLATION
Power off your machine using the OS. Shut down ALL other machines hooked to the tower (monitors, printers, speakers, modems, routers, steering wheels, etc). You should have a ALL your components plugged into a surge protector device, if you don’t, you are taking a huge chance of your Power Co. ruining your stuff!
Kill the power to the surge protector OR un-plug ALL devices at this time.
While watching your pretty lights on the front of the tower, push the button you normally use to fire up your machine. The lights should come on just for an instant dissipating the stored electrical energy in the capacitors of the motherboard and other devices hooked to it. Now plug in your tower ONLY, to a properly grounded outlet to ground the tower while we install the hardware.
Open the side cover of your box and set it aside. Put on your wrist strap and clip onto a spot on the tower frame (low and out of your way) so you can reach inside without tangling up in the cord. Now your motherboard and other components will be protected from static discharges that could damage them.
Disabling Your Existing Hard Drive
At this point you want your computer to think that the hard drive you’re installing, is the only one hooked to the motherboard, so you must disconnect the interface cable from your existing HARD DRIVES to force the machine to recognize only the new hard drive. DO NOT unhook the interface cables to any of your optical drives or the floppy drive.
If your using a multiple drive cable to hook two hard drives in series, (slave & master) just remove the IDE cable entirely at this time.
Mount your new drive in an empty bay in the tower, only touching the sides of the drive. Oils from your skin may cause damage to the drive components on the exposed underside of most IDE hard drives. NOTE: Take into consideration the interface cables and how your going to eventually re-hook ALL your drives back to the motherboard.
Sometimes it’s best to re-locate the existing drive to a different bay to make the cables work without twisting them.
Once the new hard drive and the existing drives are fastened to the tower bays, let’s try to plug the new drive’s IDE interface cable to the motherboard. Besides your cable for the optical drives and floppy, no other HARD DRIVES should be connected at this time. NOTE: the power plugs don’t matter because the board can’t “see” the drives unless the interface cable is connected to the motherboard.
With the cover still off, plug back in all your components (or switch on your surge protector) and let’s get ready to cuss up a storm. lol
When the computer boots up for the first time you need to press the button that grants you access to your BIOS and check to see if the new drive is recognized by the system.
If the drive is listed in the BIOS, we’re about halfway home. If you can’t “see” the new hard drive yet, and the other optical & floppy drives are visible, then something is wrong about the interface cable install and you need to get some personal answer from me.
Installing Windows98
Assuming the new hard drive, the optical, and floppy drive are all being recognized by the BIOS, then it’s time to put your Windows98 floppy disk in it’s drive, close the BIOS without saving and reboot your computer.
When your machine boots up, the program on the floppy disk will check your hard drive and it will then tell you the information you need to proceed with the FORMATTING of the new hard drive. Follow the prompts in the program to format your new drive. You will be instructed to reboot when finished and then the program will come back after startup and tell you the disk has no partition. Tell the program to partition the drive with a single partition on the FAT32 file system and go get a cool drink while it’s working.
After this is done you will be prompted to reboot. When the machine comes back online, it’s time to load the OS CD in the CD-ROM drive. The OS install takes some time too, so go get a snack to have with your cold drink. lol
After Windows is installed, you go through that series of reboots while your hardware is located and the drivers are installed. Use the CD’s from your machine or the one you burned with the drivers you found and get ALL your hardware up and running. Windows98 has a Device Manager found by right clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop, then choosing Properties at the bottom of the drop down window.
You’re finished installing drivers when the Device Manager has no more little yellow exclamation points in the list. If you get all but a couple of, I’ll see if I can be of further help. After this is done, it’s time to shut down Windows98 and prepare to go back into the tower and work again. Go back up to the Proceed BigDave section above and redo those safety measures for static electric charges.
Combining Hard Drives On Your Motherboard
Depending on how many IDE ports you have on your motherboard, you could just plug back in your XP drive, then plug in your 98 drive using an open IDE port with a separate cable for the installation of a single drive. This is the best way.
If you only have two IDE ports available and your optical drive, or drives,
occupies one and your hard drive occupies the other, then your old hard drive must share it's port with you new drive via a multiple drive ribbon cable with two plugs on it (a master and a slave).
If you have a RAID card or RAID is already on your motherboard just follow the instructions for adding drives to the RAID system. Test your dual-boot system by rebooting and using the BIOS to change which hard drive is the boot drive. I’ve labeled mine so I know which one to chose in the BIOS to get the OS I’m trying to run. Once you can boot back and forth between operating systems, download your DTRSC to the 98 side and test out the game. If everything’s all right, load your patches and any other games or programs (Ventrilo) you want to run with DTRSC.
BigDave, I Need Help!
If ya get stuck, just PM through the message board and I’ll see if I can help out. Hopefully with a little hard work and a few dollars spent, we can get a few more people up and running dual boots a go back to having some REAL fun.