How to Dual Boot

[bidawinner]

I bought a used computer at a gragage sale this morning.. it has some software I wanted ..but the guy couldnt find the disks.

I removed the hard drive and put it in my system, problem is I cannot run the programs unless I boot from that hard drive.. ..

HOw do I add a dual boot at startup ?

OR can I ghost just the programs I want on to my main hard drive?

looking for the easiest solution..

100F$ to walk me through this ..

 

[cyphix]

Does the HD have the .exe files to reinstall the programs? Or are the programs installed only available to be ran from that HD (ie; no way to install them again) ?

 

[sicomp]

I bought a used computer at a gragage sale this morning.. it has some software I wanted ..but the guy couldnt find the disks.

I removed the hard drive and put it in my system, problem is I cannot run the programs unless I boot from that hard drive.. ..

HOw do I add a dual boot at startup ?

OR can I ghost just the programs I want on to my main hard drive?

looking for the easiest solution..

100F$ to walk me through this ..

The reason you can not run the programs is because the program information is not in the Windows registry. So the only way to run the programs on your current machine would be to reinstall. You can not ghost the programs either because of the same issue.

In order to dual boot you would need to have installed your win 9x version first then install Windows 2000 or XP as a fresh installation and not an upgrade because 2000/XP have a boot loader which allows you to dual boot.

What you can do is get a couple of removable drive racks and put your hard drives in there and then use which ever hard drive you needed. This is about the only way I can think of without installing the programs again..

An example of the drive racks: http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=WHT-ATN-999&cat=CAS

 

[diederik]

I believe Partitionmagic can install a bootloader for you, which you can use to select an OS of choice.