Dual Boot XP with BooitNG installed

[alfredo]

Was given a CD with XP on it that autoruns to an XP SP2 install screen
(not sure if it's official release or not)

Have an old computer 256mbRAM, AMD 800mhz.

Has two hard drives each having several partitions.

Drives are mostly full, Drv0 is 20GB; Drv1 is 13GB

W98SE working fine is on Drv0 First partition C:

Have 1.5 GB free space on a Fat32 partition on Drv1 first partition.

Computer also has Bootitng installed.

Want to have a dual boot system installing XP on Drv1, first partition
FAT32 and leave the 98se on Drv0.

Appreciate any tips or troublshooting information you might give.

Specific questions:

a) any problem using FAT32 for the XP install? I want to be able to
access files across drives.

b) Is it preferable to let windows do the dual boot or might I be better
off doing the dual boot through Bootitng? I just want a simple, working
and stable dual boot. At some point in the future I will use another
partition to install linux.

c) is the 1.5gb space enough for xp

d) Once I have both OS's installed and running I will image the boot
partitions using bootitng for recovery purposes, so is it ok to install
xp without their "recovery" option?

e) any other potential problems I need to be aware of, I am not an
experienced XP user.

(sorry if this has been covered previously but google is not being
friendly with it's usenet search mode lately)

 

[John John - MVP]

Was given a CD with XP on it that autoruns to an XP SP2 install screen
(not sure if it's official release or not)

Have an old computer 256mbRAM, AMD 800mhz.

Has two hard drives each having several partitions.

Drives are mostly full, Drv0 is 20GB; Drv1 is 13GB

W98SE working fine is on Drv0 First partition C:

Have 1.5 GB free space on a Fat32 partition on Drv1 first partition.

Computer also has Bootitng installed.

Want to have a dual boot system installing XP on Drv1, first partition
FAT32 and leave the 98se on Drv0.

Drv1, first partition (1.5GB) is way too small for Windows XP, quite
frankly if you intent to use XP to any serious extent you will have a
hard time keeping the installation in check on anything less than a 10GB
partition.

Appreciate any tips or troublshooting information you might give.

Specific questions:

a) any problem using FAT32 for the XP install? I want to be able to
access files across drives.

No problem at all, Windows XP will run perfectly fine on FAT32.

b) Is it preferable to let windows do the dual boot or might I be better
off doing the dual boot through Bootitng?

Keep on using BootItNG. The Windows XP boot manager will work fine but
with BootItNG you can completely isolate the different operating
systems. The Windows XP boot manager cannot isolate the operating
systems, the boot process will rely on a common set of system files
(ntldr, NTDETECT.com &boot.ini) which will reside on a common System
partition (a common active partition on one disk). A failure in one of
the system files or on the common system partition will result in the
failure of both operating systems. With the use of a boot manager like
BootItNG each operating system will have its own system files and its
own system partition, the failure of one set of startup files will not
cripple the other operating system.


I just want a simple, working

and stable dual boot. At some point in the future I will use another
partition to install linux.

You better invest in additional hard drives!

John

 

[alfredo]

If that is the case why does this say otherwise?:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947311

"Total hard disk space that is required 1485 MB available after
installation
1765 MB peak usage during installation 750 MB available after
installation

1230 MB peak usage during installation"

 

[John John - MVP]

alfredo wrote:

If that is the case why does this say otherwise?:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947311

"Total hard disk space that is required 1485 MB available after
installation
1765 MB peak usage during installation 750 MB available after
installation

1230 MB peak usage during installation"

Do you want to do anything useful with Windows XP or do you just want to
install it? Do you want to install and actually use any programs? If
you read here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865/ Microsoft says:

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP are:

* Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is
recommended)
* At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)

No one in their right mind would ever put themselves through the torture
of running Windows XP on a P233 with 128MB of RAM, let alone 64MB!
Microsoft has always had a propensity for minimizing the requirements
for its operating systems, it's something that many have often
complained about. Technically the operating systems may install and run
on these insane low specifications but realistically the minimum
requirements published by Microsoft are misleading, to say the least.
If you think that you can run Windows XP on a 1.5GB drive then all I can
suggest is that you give it a try and find out how well it will work.

John

 

[alfredo]

so, your saying microsoft is putting the wrong information on their web
site for HD requirements for xp? see earlier reply to the other guy
(assuming you are not the other guy)

 

[John John - MVP]

so, your saying microsoft is putting the wrong information on their web
site for HD requirements for xp? see earlier reply to the other guy
(assuming you are not the other guy)

In these groups philo and I know each other very well and I have nothing
but respect for philo. I don't impersonate others and I'm sure that
philo doesn't sink to these kind of low standards.

I'm getting the idea that you had made up your opinion before posting so
I'm wondering why you came looking for more advice. Take what you got
from the Microsoft articles and apply it to real life situations, please
install Windows XP and do your own experimentations, it appears to me
that don't need any advice from others who have tried it before.

John

 

[alfredo]

Do you want to do anything useful with Windows XP or do you just want
to install it? Do you want to install and actually use any programs?
If you read here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865/ Microsoft
says:

So why can't I put the ancilliary programs on another partition than the
XP install partition?, same as I did with 98se; works fine with 98se? I
find it somewhat incredulous that the OS developer Microsoft would
recommend specs for min. HD space needed that are less than 20% of what
you're saying? Maybe you're right, have to do a bios update for the
250gb drive I got that was set at a curbside in an abandoned computer
then (I hardly every buy this stuff from stores, when I can usually get
it for free or almost free).

Re you're remarks on bootitng, are you referring to this type of
install? http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/index.htm -see the pdf
file on installing win2000 on a 98 system.

 

[John John - MVP]

Since you're an "MVP" how about telling us why Microsoft and numerous
other web pages give 1.5gb as the space needed and you're claiming 10gb?
I guess developers of XP don't know how much space it takes? Also, it is
good practice to install ancilliary programs on a separate partition or
drive, because when windoze screws up u can restore the boot partition
from an image without having to install all the programs again, which it
frequently does.

No, it's not good practice to install programs on a separate drive, it's
an almost futile undertaking! If you have to reinstall Windows you will
have to reinstall all but self executables and the smallest of programs
that write nothing to the registry, all other programs will have to be
reinstalled in order the record their registry values.

There are a few users around here who have Windows XP installed on small
4GB drives on their 'Netbook' computers and most of them will tell you
that they have to keep Windows XP on a very tight leash to have it run
smoothly on a small 4GB drive. Installing service packs and Windows
updates on small 4GB drives can be challenging at time, trying to do it
on a 1.5GB drive is craziness! Microsoft is aware of tight space on
small drives, read here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956324

1.5GB drives were just barely suitable for NT4, it became a challenge
trying to run Windows 2000 on such small drives, for Windows XP it would
only be suitable if the machine was setup as a single purpose machine, a
machine setup to control an industrial process or to control a machine,
or to do a few limited number of tasks. The best thing to do would be
to give it a try and draw your own conclusions.

John

 

[Richard]

Was given a CD with XP on it that autoruns to an XP SP2 install screen
(not sure if it's official release or not)
Have an old computer 256mbRAM, AMD 800mhz.
Has two hard drives each having several partitions.
Drives are mostly full, Drv0 is 20GB; Drv1 is 13GB
W98SE working fine is on Drv0 First partition C:
Have 1.5 GB free space on a Fat32 partition on Drv1 first partition.
Computer also has Bootitng installed.

Want to have a dual boot system installing XP on Drv1, first partition
FAT32 and leave the 98se on Drv0.

Hi Alfredo,

Here is some of the information I have on this topic:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sysreqs/pro.mspx
Recommended to Use Windows XP Home or Professional Edition
• PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed
• 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher
(64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
• 1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
* Actual requirements will vary based on your system configuration
and the applications and features you choose to install.

Your 800MHz and 256MB RAM is more than the recommended amount, but you will
need a partition larger than 1.5GB, since that figure is for XP without
anything else. You need space for Service Packs and security updates.

The hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837783
• 495 megabytes (MB) for the service pack
• an additional 500 MB for the service pack files
• Working space: 260 MB
• Files that remove SP2 200 MB
• Total if System Restore enabled: 1455 MB
1560 MB peak usage during installation
• Total if System Restore not enabled: 681 MB
1100 MB peak usage during installation
• You must also have 30 MB of free hard disk space on the
first primary system partition.
[The first primary system partition is the disk volume that contains the
hardware-specific files that are required to start Windows. For example,
the primary system partition contains the Ntldr file, the Boot.ini file,
and the Ntdetect.com file.]

So, your XP with SP2 would seem to need more than 1.5GB to start.

Hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 3
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947311
Note: Service Pack 3 includes SP2.

Like SP2, SP3 installation must have 30MB free hard disk space on the
computer's first primary system partition. You will need a minimum of 1500MB
free hard disk space. "You can safely install Windows XP SP3 on a computer
that has only 700 MB of free hard disk space on the active partition, if the
remaining 800 MB of free hard disk space is available on some other
partition on the computer. The 800 MB of disk space is used mainly to store
the temporary folder that contains the extracted service pack files."

For best performance, with only 256MB RAM, you may also need a rather large
paging file space for memory swaps - at least a 20MB pagefile.sys on your
system drive, and on a separate physical drive, an Initial 512MB and Maximum
768MB might be sufficient for starters, but check your Peak usage under
typical multi tasking conditions. You may need to downsize or upsize the
Initial amount. Keep in mind that each "page" of memory is 4K, so if you
also have a disk cluster size of 4K, paging to disk is more efficient since
it doesn't have to be buffered.

Bare minimum disk space for System Restore: 200 MB
"If you don't have this much free space, System Restore will disable itself
until the space becomes available. System Restore will create and save
restore points until this space is full, and will then begin writing over
itself beginning with the least recent data."

So far:
1536 MB for Windows XP alone
30 MB free for any SP installations
495 MB for SP2 (? If you use other partitions for working space?)
700 MB for SP3 (Using other partitions for working space)
20 MB for pagefile.sys [other drive for main pagefile(s)]
200 MB for System Restore
- - - -
2981 MB TOTAL so far
526 MB (15% free space for Defrag to work properly)
- - - -
3507 MB TOTAL so far

That looks like about 3.5 GB for XP up thru SP3, and there are still
numerous critical security updates that were released after SP3. And then
there are some applications that insist on installing on the system drive,
so you would need to reserve maybe another .5 GB. You might just be able to
squeeze everything into a 4 GB partition. (Personally, I would not want to
even try a full XP installation with less than 10 GB.

For comparison, here are some things on my Win XP Pro SP3 system:

] Contents of Windows folder:
] Size on disk: 2.64 GB (2,845,588,685 bytes)
] Contains: 19,929 Files, 1,811 Folders
]
] Documents and Settings folder: nearly 300 MB
] pagefile.sys = 1524 MB
]
] Contents of System Volume Information folder (Restore Points)
] Size on disk: 1.65 GB (1,775,538,748 bytes)
] Contains: 5,258 Files, 353 Folders
] (The Windows registry has grown about 11 MB in the past 4 months.)

Of course, you can move your "My Documents" folder to another partition. (In
Windows Explorer, [WinKey+E] right-click My Documents, click Properties,
click Target tab.) You can also move your TIF (Temporary Internet Files) to
another partition from Internet Options, [TIF] "Settings" button, "Move
Folder" button. You can edit Environment Variables to relocate temp folders.
(And there are other things that I do not presently recall.

Specific questions:

See other people's replies for additional answers.

(Hope This Helps.
--Richard