From TNPC issue #4.15...

System Warts - Installing Windows 2000 Dual-boot with Windows 98 SE

by T.J. Lee
July 26, 2001

Don't you just hate computers some days? For some client testing I recently installed Windows 2000 Professional on systems here at the Naked PC Underground Labs (located deep in the heart of Central California) that were already running Windows 98SE. All I wanted to do was add Windows 2000 on a separate partition and be able to boot up either version of Windows.

Windows 2000 is supposed to make this easy and it did allow me to do what it refers to as a "clean install" where it purports to peacefully co-exist with my previous operating system. Windows 2000 partitioned the necessary free space allowing me to assign a portion of my unused hard disk for its use and when done it booted up to a menu allowing me 30 seconds to choose an operating system for the current session.

Windows 2000 was the menu default but I could highlight the "Microsoft Windows" second OS option and hit Enter (or just wait for the 30 second count-down to expire). If I made no choice and did not touch the keyboard Windows 2000 would boot when the 30- second countdown was complete.

One of the first things I wanted to do was change this default menu setting and find a way to disable the countdown timer. You'll find the instructions on how to do this with a Windows 2000 dual boot system on this supplemental page:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/415/tr.cgi?jim1

Okay, I managed to tweak the boot menu to my heart's content and now had two complete and separate operating systems. Ha! On my Windows 98SE partition I have Office 2000 installed. On my Windows 2000 partition I planned on installing Office XP but having had some experience with Microsoft installations I decided I'd test my Office 2000 applications under Windows 98SE before installing Office XP under Windows 2000.

In theory the two operating system installs were separate and distinct with only enough of a Windows 2000 footprint on my Windows 98SE partition to allow for the dual-boot process. But unhappily that was not the case. As a consultant I load a number of add-ins when I fire up applications like Excel and Word. Most of these I've written myself and consist of tools that help me in my daily tasks. But when Excel or Word loaded any template or add-in I was suddenly getting the dreaded "Compile error in hidden module" error. This error is usually indicative of something in one of the VBA DLLs getting corrupted or overwritten. No doubt Windows 2000 decided to update some file or setting (or both) better left alone.

In Excel I was getting not only the compile error but an error message I've never encountered before (and I go back with Excel to when it came with its own run-time version of Windows) about a workbook that contained a reference to the workbook and could not be closed. That one really had me scratching my head.

I thought of waving the rubber chicken over the PC a few times but opted for the uninstall and reinstall shuffle to try to jog Office 2000 back into it's pre-Windows 2000-on-the-same-PC-state. Uninstall Office 2000. Reinstall Office 2000. No joy. I look up the content of the four folders where Word and Excel keep their extraneous start up files (two folders each).

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\XLStart
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\Xlstart
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Startup
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

Now the files in these folders have not changed from before the Windows 2000 install and no new files magically appeared but some of the add-ins rely on Registry entries so I figured Windows 2000 may have played fast and loose with my Registry settings. I remove all the files in these folders and start adding them back one by one. Joy. I'm able to determine which files are triggering the error messages and I uninstall and reinstall them and get everything back to normal. Whew!

You'd think all this stuff would work better than it does by now wouldn't you?

You can reach T.J. Lee at:
mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com

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