Dual Boot w/XP Pro Ugrade?

[Netherwolf]

Ranting cynicism and back-story: (Fast forward to end)
I'm running Win2k Pro and after several attempts to setup
a dual boot system w/98se using the proscribed method, I
threw up my hands in despair and went with a clean
install. For some reason, that route didn't crash and
reboot after installing COM+ components. After a bit of
reading and rethinking, I'm thinking of making another go
at it again, this time with non-proscribed methods.
And trust me, I regret not having a dual boot every day of
my life.

But, while passing through a Best Buy, I noticed XP Pro
available for around $150. This brought to mind
Microsoft's righteous jihad to rid the earth of Win2k and
earlier. This also brought to mind the classic quote "I've
upgraded from XP to 98SE, and I'm much happier now."

***********************************************************

Actual question begins here:

Can I install a dual/triple-booting system with a copy XP
Pro UPGRADE? As in, 98SE on C, 2K Pro on D, XP Pro on E?
Is it possible? And will it crash midway the installation?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Ranting cynicism and back-story: (Fast forward to end)
I'm running Win2k Pro and after several attempts to setup
a dual boot system w/98se using the proscribed method, I
threw up my hands in despair and went with a clean
install. For some reason, that route didn't crash and
reboot after installing COM+ components. After a bit of
reading and rethinking, I'm thinking of making another go
at it again, this time with non-proscribed methods.
And trust me, I regret not having a dual boot every day of
my life.

But, while passing through a Best Buy, I noticed XP Pro
available for around $150. This brought to mind
Microsoft's righteous jihad to rid the earth of Win2k and
earlier. This also brought to mind the classic quote "I've
upgraded from XP to 98SE, and I'm much happier now."

***********************************************************

Actual question begins here:

Can I install a dual/triple-booting system with a copy XP
Pro UPGRADE? As in, 98SE on C, 2K Pro on D, XP Pro on E?
Is it possible? And will it crash midway the installation?

The simplest way I've found to multi-boot between Win9x/Me, Win2K
& WinXP would be to partition your drive roughly as follows:

Primary Partition:
C: FAT32 Win9x

Extended Partition:

1st Logical Drive D: NTFS Win2K
2nd Logical Drive E: NTFS WinXP

Adjust the partition sizes according to your actual hard drive(s)
size and the amount of space you'd like to allocate to each OS and its
applications.

Create the partitions using Win9x's FDISK so you can enable large
disk support (FAT32). (No need for 3rd party partitioning
utilities/boot managers and their frequent complications.) You need
only format the Win9x partition at this time, the Win2K/XP
installations can format their own respective partitions as part of
their setup routines.

Install Win9x first, being sure to select "C:\Windows" when asked
for the default Windows directory. When you subsequently install
Win2K/XP, be sure to specify "D:\Winnt" and D:\Windows," as
preferred/applicable) when asked for the default Windows directory, to
place them on the other partitions. The Win2K/XP installation routines
will automatically set up the Multi-boot menu for you. The default
settings for this menu can be readily edited from within Win2K/XP.

This method can be adapted to using 2 physical hard drives by
placing the boot partition (C:, which still must be FAT32) and either
of the operating systems on the Primary Master hard drive, and the
second and/or third operating system(s) on the second hard drive. Just
remember to keep each OS in its own partition.

It is also possible to have a 4th partition for shared
applications, but it would be necessary for such a partition to be
formatted in the common file format (FAT32). The applications would
also have to be installed into each OS (to ensure proper system file
placement and registry updates), one at a time, but the bulk of the
program files could be located on this common partition. I do not,
however, actually recommend doing this as, if you were to uninstall
such an application from one OS, you may not be able to gracefully
uninstall it from the second/third OS, having already deleted crucial
installation data during the first uninstall action.

Just about everything you need to know (URLs may wrap):

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/administration/management/mltiboot.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gettingstarted/multiboot.asp

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Netherwolf]

Well... uh, thanks Bruce, but that wasn't the question. I
could be a smart-ass and say I already knew that, but that
would be rude and heck, there are other people who didn't
and I suppose I should thank you on their behalf -
especially since you took the time to write all that.

My question is this: Can a dual-boot be setup with XP
UPRGADE in lieu of the Full install. Because, the
word "upgrade" is conjuring mental images of moving from
my old OS instead of moving WITH my old OS.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Well... uh, thanks Bruce, but that wasn't the question. I
could be a smart-ass and say I already knew that, but that
would be rude and heck, there are other people who didn't
and I suppose I should thank you on their behalf -
especially since you took the time to write all that.

My question is this: Can a dual-boot be setup with XP
UPRGADE in lieu of the Full install. Because, the
word "upgrade" is conjuring mental images of moving from
my old OS instead of moving WITH my old OS.

Actually, when you perform an upgrade of an operating system, the
license for the older, qualifying OS becomes subsumed into the license
for the newer OS, which over-writes the older OS. Basically, you
have no license to use the Upgrade version without there also being an
earlier qualifying license permanently in place.

As long as you have a license and installation media for a
qualifying OS, there's nothing to prevent your using an Upgrade CD to
perform a clean installation of WinXP onto the third partition.
Obviously, the licenses for the Win98 and Win2K installations that
will remain intact and operational on the other two partitions
_cannot_ (in accordance with the upgrade's EULA) be used as qualifying
products for a clean installation of the upgrade onto a third
partition.

It's quite possible to perform a clean installation using an
Upgrade CD, provided you have the true installation CD for the earlier
OS. The Upgrade CD checks to see if a qualifying OS is installed,
and, if it finds none, it asks you to insert the installation media
(CD) of that OS. Unfortunately, an OEM "Recovery/Restore" CD will not
work for this purpose; you must have a true installation CD, complete
with the "\Win98" folder and *.cab files, or the "\i386" folder of
WinNT/2K.

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Guest]

D'oh. What I should have mentioned is, on my machine,
Win2K refused to install on my second hard drive using
FAT32 (I haven't yet tried NTFS, but that wouldn't play
nice with my 98SE). The only way I could coax Win2K onto
my system was by letting sit on my primary hard-drive,
which obviously can makes dual-booting with a DOS-based OS
(like Win98SE) a bit difficult. As I was saying, it would
install up to the COM+ components or maybe the Internet
Information Server (I think the latter) and then it
crashes and reboots. It could quite possibly be that my
machine is evil.

 

[mc]

Well... uh, thanks Bruce, but that wasn't the question. I
could be a smart-ass and say I already knew that, but that
would be rude and heck, there are other people who didn't
and I suppose I should thank you on their behalf -
especially since you took the time to write all that.

My question is this: Can a dual-boot be setup with XP
UPRGADE in lieu of the Full install. Because, the
word "upgrade" is conjuring mental images of moving from
my old OS instead of moving WITH my old OS.

Try using notepad to create a file named a:\win.com.
Then when upgrading... point it to "A" Drive. (Floppy)
Hopefully it will see win.com and think it's an upgrade.
It worked for win 3.11 to win95. <>
OH might need Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com to make system disk
with disk tools.
Or put win98 cd in cd-rom and when it asks for previous OS, Point it to
cd-rom. It will see it and continue.