I forgot to tell you that the 20bg drive is a scsi drive. What I did was
simply unplug the 80gb IDE drive and rebooted. It boots back to the 20 gb
drive but gets back to my original problem and why I tried reinstalling. Once
the machine goes through the boot sequence and begins to load start up apps,
I get an "explorer error", and the computer goes no further with loading. I
figured I would reinstall to fill into any holes in the system files. Don't
know what caused the explorer error but it has been some time since
restarting my machine. I leave it on constantly and had to reboot after
installing an auto update of IE6 SP1 patch or something like that from
windows auto update service. Any ideas how to fix the error? Any further
suggestions on how to get 98 off the 80gb drive? Thanks for the help and your
patients.

"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:

I still want to go back to the question of "Why" you were installing over the top of the original installation. But we can get to that later.

In BIOS, make sure that the 20 GB is visible and correctly detected. Make sure it is the Primary Master. Then look for the Boot Order item and make sure it reads:

1. Floppy (or CDROM)
2. CDROM (or Floppy)
3. HDD0
4. No other devices.

You don't want it looking for HDD1 if it can't find a bootable partition on HDD0.

Try that and tell us what happens.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"Mathers" wrote in message ...
Sorry about that. I didn't understand your question before. I have two
seperate drives. No partitions. I was attempting to reinstall over a previous
version. Drive C was a 20 gb for system files, Drive D was 80 gb for files,
docs, music, etc.. I set the 80gb as the primary slave when I installed it a
few months ago. It put the new os on this 80gb drive and now boots from this
drive. I would like it to boot from the 20 gb drive and dump the os off the
80 gb drive. Does this info explain better?

"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:

You still haven't answered all of my questions. For the sake of simplicity, we'll call them Old C and New C.

1. Are these "drives" two partitions on the same physical hard drive? Or are they actually two different drives? If they are two different drives, how are they arranged? I assume one is Primary Master. Which one? The other is what, Secondary Master or Primary Slave?

2. Are you attempting to install Windows over the top of a previous installation on Old C? Or did you reformat it?

3. Why are you reinstalling? What error(s) led you to decide to reinstall?

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"Mathers" wrote in message ...
Somehow my drive letters were switched and what was the old D: became the new
C: and I didn't know it. When I run FDISK, will I lose any info from the
drive that I am making inactive? Any problems I should be aware of? Thanks!

"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:

I'm having difficulty deciphering your message. Windows 98, whichever one you have booted to, is *always* on C:\ drive. In order for your machine to boot to that drive, it must be the Active drive. If you have another Win98 system installed to what is now your D:\ drive, and want that to be the boot drive, you have to use a Windows Startup floppy boot, run FDISK, and make that partition Active. Then when you boot to that Windows, it will be the new C:\ drive.

Why did you think you had to reinstall Windows? What else is on the current C:\ drive besides the new Windows installation? If there's nothing else, you can reformat that drive. If there was other stuff, and you can fix things to boot to the old system, you can then delete the Windows folder and the Program Files folder (provided you didn't already have a Program Files folder there.)

Do you actually have two different hard drives, or only two partitions on one drive?

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"Mathers" wrote in message ...
How can I uninstall win 98se from a second drive. Had to reinstall win98 and
it flip flopped my drive letters and the new os was put on the wrong drive.
Now this is the drive it boots up in. Old c drive is now the new d drive.
What the hell? Just want it back to booting up in the origional config.
Thanks!