This is an ugly situation. I just went through this pain
with my own PC. Here's what I would recommend. Move any
data that you want to save to the "DISK2". You can just
leave that one alone as an NTFS Partition. If you need to
copy anything back to Win98, you can do that from XP once
it's reloaded. XP will see both NTFS and Fat32
partitions.
Next boot up your XP install disk like you were going to
install the software. During the first few screens it
will identify your hard drives and give you an option to
setup of and install to various partitions. Use this
utility to delete all the partitions off of the first hard
drive. After you use the utility to delete the
partitions, do not proceed further. Just back out of the
utility and end the setup program.
Find your boot floopy for windows 98. Boot from the
floppy and run fdisk. Setup up an initial fat32 partition
for your windows 98 to install to. Make sure that you set
it for the active partition. You will have to reboot
again after setting up the partition and then format it
for fat32. After that you should be able to begin
installing windows 98. You have to install 98 first.
AFter 98 is installed, run the XP setup disk from windows
98. Choose the option to install XP to another partition,
(not as an upgrade to 98) System will reboot and then
setup up the configuration for a dual boot. In the XP
setup screens go back and partition the rest of your drive
for NTFS for the XP install and then continue with the
normal XP installation.
I hope this helps. As I said I just recently did this to
my own system, and it was a headache to get it initially
setup and configured. Hope this helps. Good luck.
>-----Original Message-----
>Hi
>
>My 2 HDDs are partitioned like this:
>Disk1
>C: with FAT32 (for windows98 SE)
>D: with NTFS (for windowsXP Pro)
>E: with FAT32 (for personal data)
>Disk2
>F: with FAT32 (for personal data and backups)
>
>I want to re-partition disk1 (making a new clean-install
>for both 98 and XP) and the questions are:
>
>-- How to do it, since windows98 boot floppy doesn't see
>the NTFS?
>
>-- The data in disk2 (Drive F
will be lost? (so I can
>move there the contents of E: if it is safe).
>
>Thanks
>.
>