dual boot win2K?

  • Thread starter Thread starter larrye
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larrye

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I HAD a dual boot set-up with win-98. I have been wanting to upgrade to win 2000. I know it is better with n-track, BUT I have an ark24/96 soundcard. Well, my boot drive crashed so I bought a maxtor 5400 RPM 20 gig for my boot and program drive and set it up to dual boot win-98. Now ark finally releases the 2000 drivers!

Questions:
1. ark 2K DRIVERS OK?
2. Can I use efdisk and mrbooter to set up dual boot win2K? I got it from emeric and used it for win98
3. Should I switch to win2K?
4. Should I keep the dual boot?

Thanks,
Larry
 
I don't know about the Ark drivers, as I don't have an Ark card, but...
2 - You can use those things, but I don't see why you need to. As long as you install Win2k after Win98, you'll be able to dual boot. Even if you install Win98 after Win2k, you can dual boot, but you have to do a repair install on Win2k (make an emergency repair disk if you go this route).
3 - Probably so, but I think this really depends on the Ark drivers and any other hardware/software you have. Win2k is hands down the better OS, so if you're all compatible, then by all means.
4 - Only if you need to.
 
Don't have an Ark either, sorry.

Win 2k is good indeed. Hasn't crashed for me yet.

Dual boot can be handy but I feel one must be comfortable with OSs in the first place. The vast majority of people don't do it (I think!) and they don't seem to have problems.
 
Your dual 98 solution is a good one and you should stick with it if it's working for you. Don't ever change operating systems just because you "think" one might be better. Make sure that there is a darn good reason for making the switch!

With that said, I think Windows 2000 is a fine OS and would never in a million years consider using Win9x ever again. I'm pretty sure that aardvark has had some major problems delivering Windows 2000 drivers though. If music is your primary goal, then proceed with caution!

If you choose to dual boot Win2000 and Win98, then the best way to go is to use Windows 2000's native OS loader and ditch mr. booter. If you install Windows 2000 on a machine with Windows 98 already on it, the installer will automatically configure the multi boot for you (most of the time). Having mr. booter on there though could complicate things.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I dual boot, but primarily because I have one computer and a DSL connection and I don't want an ethernet driver taking time away from the CPU while recording. Dual boot isn't for everyone, but it is good if you only have room or budget for a single computer and have a number of devices you use under normal operation, but want to disable when recording.

As long as I'm setting up dual boot I tend to disable any devices I wouldn't use for recording just to keep things as lean as possible. For example, eliminating a device that is sharing an IRQ can cut down in interrupt overhead you pay on each interrupt, for a device your not even using. I can also do a number of optimizations on the OS I have set up for recording, that I wouldn't want to do for normal use. Things like setting background tasks at a higher priority, formating the recorind partition with larger block sizes, disabling ACPI IRQ routing, or even enabling DMA on hard drives, might be beneficial for a recording application, but be problematic or undesirable in a normal configuration.

I guess the bottom line is, I dual boot because I've had specific problems in the past that were solved by it. For most people, the best rule is: if your recording apps are running fine without dual boot then don't bother with it.
 
If the W2K drivers for your card are solid, I think you'll be happier with Windows 2000. My experience has been that if an app crashes, I just restart it. Reboots are minimal.

If the drivers for your card are at a 1.0 stage or have a bad reputation on W2K, you might be better off dual booting. I dual boot, but not for recording reasons. (Power to the penguin! Go Linux! :) )

I've used System Commander too. Nice option for booting different OS's (even in different languages!) from the same drive.

As always, YMMV. :) Just make sure you have backups of anything critical before you go too far.

Tony
 
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