Dual boot with XP, Win 98 won't work

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Breeze
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T

The Breeze

I followed the instructions from microsoft.com on how to install Windows 98
and XP, but all I get when I try to run Win 98 is a black screen with an
underscore at the top left. It just hangs.

I partitioned a 120GB HD and installed Windows 98 on the second partition
(drive d, approx 35GB, FAT 32), and then installed XP on the first partition
(drive c, approx 80GB, NTFS). Windows 98 booted fine until I installed XP.
The instructions say to load the earlier OS first, so I'm kind of leary to
try and reinstall Win 98, now that XP is working fine. Any suggestions?
Otherwise I'm just going to format the 2nd partition to NTFS and use it for
storage or something.

It's no big deal, the only reason for the dual boot is that I have some old
DOS games and a few other games that won't work on XP, but they might do
just as well to go in our garage sale this weekend. :)

-Breeze
 
GSV Three Minds in a Can said:
You needed to put 98 on the first partition .. or failing that, the
first partition needs to be FAT32. The Win9x boot loader, and system
files, have to be on the first partition (wherever the OS itself might
be) and they don't understand NTFS. If you look at c:, you'll probably
see them there, (io.sys, msdos.sys, config.sys, command.com, etc.) but
being in NTFS format, the Win98 loader (bootsect.dos, which should also
be on c:) doesn't know how to find them and load them).

Ah, gotcha. That was in the back of my mind when I was doing all this,
thinking that maybe when it came time to run Win 98 it might need something
on the c drive first. Oh well.
If you really want to do it, see the article about dual booting at
http://www.dougknox.com/index.html
'Installing Win98 after Xp is installed'

However, personally, I'd just dump 98 .. there is really very little
that 98 will run and XP won't, and I can live without those (old DOS
games, which prod the hardware directly, mostly).

Yep, there's a few old DOS games that I got addicted to and like to play
once in a while but like I said, I think they're heading for the garage sale
this Sat.
Thanks for the info.

-Breeze
 
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