dual boot system and reformatting HD

one of the reasons I needed to reformat my harddrive
recently was incompatibility of old (external)devices with
XP (in this case a software security dongle). As I will be
running a dual boot system with W98SE will I be able to
reinstall my W98 if necessary without affecting the XP
files on the partitioned hard drive, i.e reformat in DOS
without affecting the working of the NTFS partition or
will XP see this as a change to my system and need
reactivation again?

If you try to install 98SE with XP already installed you'll screw things up.

For a dual-boot to work correctly the older operating system must be
installed first. In your case: SE then XP.

"rabid" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3a9c01c3fe3c$b32cb3d0$a501280a@phx.gbl...
> one of the reasons I needed to reformat my harddrive
> recently was incompatibility of old (external)devices with
> XP (in this case a software security dongle). As I will be
> running a dual boot system with W98SE will I be able to
> reinstall my W98 if necessary without affecting the XP
> files on the partitioned hard drive, i.e reformat in DOS
> without affecting the working of the NTFS partition or
> will XP see this as a change to my system and need
> reactivation again?

yes but can I reinstall W98SE by reformatting the FAT32
partition if it gets corrupted or unstable (as Microsoft
tells us it does) or will this affect the XP in any way?

Assuming you're talking about reformatting the C: drive, that will
prevent you from booting into Windows XP. If you want to do a clean
Windows 98SE install, just delete the Windows 98 Windows and Program
Files folders while running Windows XP. Then do the Windows 98
install.

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 14:20:40 -0800,
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>yes but can I reinstall W98SE by reformatting the FAT32
>partition if it gets corrupted or unstable (as Microsoft
>tells us it does) or will this affect the XP in any way?