Stabbing XP

[smi256]

I have two hard drives; one is normal with windows 98 on it.  The other is some scrap HD that I put XP on so I could play around hacking it.  
Buuutt….
That scrap HD is hardly big enough (1.28Gb) for XP and much else, AND it’s slow (DMA/66).  So I take the XP drive out of the computer because I still have my 98 bootable drive.
Here’s where the problem is, without that XP drive, BIOS doesn’t see my 98 HD.  That doesn’t make sense to me, at all…  my guess is that when I installed XP onto that little HD, that it made itself the bootable drive (without asking me, now rude).  If that is the case, then how do I go about setting up my 98 HD as the bootable drive?

Note: there is nothing I want to save on the XP HD, but I will now sacrifice my 98 HD
Note: ATM, the computer is running normally with the exception that it asks what OS to run during boot up, and that XP HD is still there.  

[Guest:SS]

You need to set your 98 drive to MASTER (or primary/whatever) - there will be a jumper setting bit on the back of it (next to where the IDE ribbon plugs in) which you need to change. Most drives have instructions nearby for which to select, if not then you'll need to get the manual (Google for the drive name if you've not got a hard copy).
If you're keeping the XP one in there, change it to SLAVE (or secondary/whatever).

[smi256]

:hmmm: Thank you, but I already checked and my 98 HD was already jumped to master on the primary IDE.  My new lead is that there is some sort of program that is intercepting the boot up.  It’s the one that lets my choose which OS I want to load (Note: I didn’t put it there, XP did), this program has to be on the XP HD, hence the no booty without it…    I’ll take a look at what to program is named tomorrow (when I’m not trying to kill my brain from the inside with calculus.  I would have thought I would have learned from last semester not to take the next class…)

[diskreet]

check your bios settings, maybe the boot order is set to boot of the 2nd disk.  

if not, XP is known for not being multi-boot friendly... it probably told your 1st drive's boot sector to look for drive 2.

if none of this makes sense, please forgive me.. i'm kind of out of it atm.

 

[FragMaster1972]

try editing the boot.ini file. It'll list all OS's installed and ask you which to boot from unless you take the old ones out.