Preparing For Dual Boot With Windows 2000 Professional

Windows 2000 Professional Tricks

Preparing For Dual Boot with Windows 2000 Professional:

Preparing for Dual Boot

Although Windows 2000 has recently moved to Release Candidate stage (this usually indicates that Microsoft believes the code is ready to ship), you may find that all your hardware isn't supported yet. The big difference between RC1 and Beta 3 is that the number of devices supported out of the box has increased. This means that checking the Windows 2000 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) to see if your devices are supported is even more important.

During the prerelease phase of Windows 2000, checking

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/howtobuy/upgrading/compat/default.asp will be your best indication as to whether your particular collection of hardware will work. At some point, this list will probably be integrated into the main HCL found at http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/. If you don't see your device listed here, you can check with the vendor to see if it has Windows 2000 drivers available (you can try using the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 drivers, but don't expect them to work) or when it plans to have the drivers available.

Installation Options

You will need at least two partitions on your hard disk to be able to boot from the OS that is currently on your machine, as well as from Windows 2000 Professional. One of the strengths of Windows 2000 is that it supports FAT32, which means you won't have to perform a substantial remake of your system to change how a partition is formatted in order to use it. The easiest method for setting up a dual-boot situation is to have an extended partition on which to install Windows 2000 Professional. The Windows 2000 files will be installed on the extended partition. The boot files for Windows 2000 will be installed on drive C. The only remaining task will be to get the drivers needed for your video card, network interface card (NIC), and so forth to work in case your devices aren't detected or supported by Windows 2000.

Before you believe that you can perform a dual boot using a single partition for Windows 2000, read what follows closely. Microsoft has publicly stated that it will not support this configuration—which means that if you decide to proceed, you will be on your own. Microsoft Tech Support won't be able to help you fix the problem if things go awry.

The main reason dual booting on a single partition isn't supported is that Windows 2000 also uses the Program Files directory. This means that some of the same filenames used by Windows 9x are also used by Windows 2000. What may happen is that when you install Windows 2000, Windows 9x will be rendered nonfunctional. This problem seems to be particularly acute when you've installed Windows 98 Second Edition prior to Windows 2000. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and has indicated it will attempt to have the problem resolved by the time Windows 2000 ships.

Enter PartitionMagic

The safest option for installing Windows 2000 on a machine and dual booting between operating systems involves the use of a primary partition. The primary partition is the first one created when you partition your hard disk. It's also the one from which you will normally boot. However, with FDISK—whether it is from one of the later versions of MS-DOS or from Windows 9x or Windows NT—you are allowed to create only one primary partition. Freeing up space is another problem you'll encounter when you want to set up an additional partition after the hard disk drive has been running for a while. This is where PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 4.0 and a companion product known as BootMagic come into the picture. The manuals accompanying PartitionMagic offer several good examples of how the product can be used.

When you purchase your copy of PartitionMagic, make sure you find a package with a notice printed on the outside that a copy of BootMagic is installed. You will want to install PartitionMagic first to prepare your system for the installation of Windows 2000 before installing BootMagic. The installation from CD takes just a couple of minutes. Please take time to read through the manuals to familiarize yourself with the product. This will save a lot of time later when you start installing Windows 2000.

Before you begin, create a Windows startup disk, if you don't already have one. This gives you a chance to get the hard disk back to a booting condition in the event that something goes wrong. During the PartitionMagic installation (and later during the BootMagic installation) process, you will create a series of "rescue" floppy disks. Do not bypass this process, and be sure to put the disks in a safe place. One of these disks may be your only hope of getting back to a working situation if you experience a problem.

Before starting the partitioning process (and probably the backup of the hard disk drive), it's a good idea to erase any unneeded files, clear out the Windows Temp directory, and defragment the hard disk using a utility such as Symantec's Norton Utilities. This will help clear up as much space as possible on the drive you'll repartition. When this has been done, you can start PartitionMagic to resize the primary partition. You can then create the partition for your Windows 2000 installation. Once you've decided how you want to resize the partition, the workstation you're using will reboot and the operations will be performed in what appears to be MS-DOS mode. Then, the system will reboot and you can start the process of formatting the partition and installing the desired operating system.

You can start the setup process in one of two ways: You can select the Prepare For New Operating System icon on the main PartitionMagic screen for a wizard-based approach, or you can proceed manually by selecting the Operations pull-down menu and then selecting the Create option to begin a similar process. The difference between these two approaches is that with the latter, you will have the ability to choose a FAT32 partition type. When using the manual approach, you will need to make sure that you select a primary partition instead of a logical partition type. This will enable Windows NT to boot on its own partition and not place any files on the initial partition that came with your hard disk. Before starting the Windows 2000 Professional installation, you may want to use FDISK to mark the partition you plan to use for Windows NT as the active partition. That way, it will be installed to the correct location.

Installing BootMagic

BootMagic enables you to easily switch between operating systems when you boot instead of having to boot to the last operating system you used, run FDISK to change the active partition, and then reboot to use the operating system you want. As with the installation of PartitionMagic, you will want to create a BootMagic rescue disk in case BootMagic unexpectedly stops running.

BootMagic will automatically detect any additional partitions you create and list them in the boot options menu. You can set the delay time to expire before your computer boots to the default operating system, and you can change the default operating system at any time. And as you add hard drives to your system, BootMagic can keep up with you.

BootMagic supports booting operating systems from drives other than the first. This is something that Windows 9x and Windows NT aren't able to do. You may not need this option all the time, but when you do, it is nice to know it's available.

Installing Windows 2000 Professional

Begin the installation process for Windows 2000 by booting from a floppy disk and following it with three other disks. If you can't find these disks, go to the Bootdisk directory on the Windows 2000 Professional CD and run the Makedisk program. You will want to have four newly formatted floppy disks when you start the Makedisk program.

For those of you used to installing Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 is a very different install. In one word: quiet. Although you have all the progress indications of prior releases, Microsoft has done a good job of perfecting how well plug-and-play detection works. From start to finish, you can expect the installation to take between 30 and 45 minutes.

Booting Windows 2000 for the First Time

If all has gone well during the installation process, you are now ready for your first reboot. Watch carefully as Windows 2000 boots up and displays the logon screen to see if there are any video driver-related problems. If in case you are not able to see the logon screen elect to boot Windows 2000 using the VGA boot option.

With Windows NT 4.0, you selected Windows NT 4.0 VGA Mode. With Windows 2000, you will do it a little differently. When the Boot Manager screen appears, you will first press [F8] to display a secondary screen, where you will select Enable VGA Mode. This will be your best option for resolving video-driver-related problems.

The next place to check to see if all your hardware was identified and your drivers were installed is Control Panel. Double-click the Network And Dial-Up Connections icon and you'll see the current network status of your machine. If you see a Local Network Connection icon in addition to the Create Network Connection icon, this means the network card in your system was correctly identified. Like in case you are using only an ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) connection with the network card, the Microsoft Client, IP Protocol, and the Network Card driver for NIC will be loaded.

The first time when you boot the workstation, this additional icon if does not appear in the Network window or you want to see if other hardware wasn't installed or identified by the Windows 2000 installation process, double-click the Add/Remove Hardware Wizard. Using the default option, you will see a list of all devices that have been identified in your system. By double-clicking each item that's identified with a yellow exclamation point, you can see exactly what the problem is with each device.