Newbie: Installing Dual XP on NTFS and Win 98 on FAT32

[Mark]

I was wondering how I can go about doing this. I just bought a 200G hard
drive. I am currently running FAT32 on the old 20G hard drives where one
partition has Chinese Win98 and the other has XP FAT32. The 20G drive
sounds like it's dying.

I wish to run both O/S's as I am now, mainly for Video Transfer and I am
using a P4 Celeron 1.8G, but I am unsure if this is possible. I want the XP
partition to use NTFS.

Can anyone assist?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

you could use a program like partition magic (if you don't want to pay you
could use a free one program like gnu parted) to copy and resize the
partitoins onto the 200gb hard disk, assuming both are connected to the
comptuer, then remove the old one. I'm not sure if you would have to copy or
rewrite the mbr program, depends what your using to dual boot. I think
partition magic can convert a fat32 drive to ntfs, if it can't i'm pretty
sure there's also a program that comes with windows xp for this purpose.
(can't check anything as my computer isn't working properly, which is why i'm
here)

 

[Alex Nichol]

I was wondering how I can go about doing this. I just bought a 200G hard
drive. I am currently running FAT32 on the old 20G hard drives where one
partition has Chinese Win98 and the other has XP FAT32. The 20G drive
sounds like it's dying.

I wish to run both O/S's as I am now, mainly for Video Transfer and I am
using a P4 Celeron 1.8G, but I am unsure if this is possible. I want the XP
partition to use NTFS.

Start with the 98 boot floppy; make a suitable modest FAT 32 partition
for Win98, then install that.

Now, from that, run the XP CD. Enter Install, change Upgrade to New
Install, and when it asks where HIT ESC to get the ability to make a
suitable size partition for XP's installation. Do not attempt to use
anything like the whole of this disk; 10 GB for the 98 and 20 for the XP
is probably right. This will make a dual boot setup (where XP is seen
as on drive D. Once done, and providing you are at XP SP1 -
preferably get the full SP2 on CD and run it as first thing - go to
Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management, select Disk
Management and look lower right for the graphic of the drive. R-click in
the Unallocated space and Create Partition

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I was wondering how I can go about doing this. I just bought a 200G hard
drive. I am currently running FAT32 on the old 20G hard drives where one
partition has Chinese Win98 and the other has XP FAT32. The 20G drive
sounds like it's dying.

I wish to run both O/S's as I am now, mainly for Video Transfer and I am
using a P4 Celeron 1.8G, but I am unsure if this is possible. I want the XP
partition to use NTFS.

Can anyone assist?

Thanks

The simplest way I've found to dual boot between Win9x/Me and WinXP
would be to partition your drive(s) roughly as follows:

C: Primary FAT32 Win9x/Me/Legacy Apps
D: Extended NTFS WinXP/Modern Apps

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.)

Install Win9x/Me first, being sure to select "C:\Windows" (or
D:\Windows, if you prefer) when asked for the default Windows
directory. When you subsequently install WinXP, be sure to specify
"D:\Winnt" (or "D:\Windows," "C:\Winnt" as referred/applicable) when
asked for the default Windows directory, to place it in the other
partition. The WinXP installation routine will automatically set up a
Multi-boot menu for you. The default settings for this menu can be
readily edited from within WinXP. NOTE: If you elect to place
Win9x/Me on the "D:" drive, you'll _have_ to leave the "C:" drive as
FAT32.

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 operating system on the second hard drive.

It is also possible to have a 3rd 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 OS, having already deleted crucial
installation data during the first uninstall action.

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

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.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

 

[BP]

The simplest way I've found to dual boot between Win9x/Me and WinXP
would be to partition your drive(s) roughly as follows:

C: Primary FAT32 Win9x/Me/Legacy Apps
D: Extended NTFS WinXP/Modern Apps

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.)

Install Win9x/Me first, being sure to select "C:\Windows" (or
D:\Windows, if you prefer) when asked for the default Windows
directory. When you subsequently install WinXP, be sure to specify
"D:\Winnt" (or "D:\Windows," "C:\Winnt" as referred/applicable) when
asked for the default Windows directory, to place it in the other
partition. The WinXP installation routine will automatically set up a
Multi-boot menu for you. The default settings for this menu can be
readily edited from within WinXP. NOTE: If you elect to place
Win9x/Me on the "D:" drive, you'll _have_ to leave the "C:" drive as
FAT32.

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 operating system on the second hard drive.

It is also possible to have a 3rd 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 OS, having already deleted crucial
installation data during the first uninstall action.

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

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/2/10.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

Excellent post Bruce. (Alex too). Saved to file.
For clarification: W98 will be looking for and must have a FAT (32) file
system on the primary boot partition of the C: drive regardless of where the
OS files are stored or it won't work?
That is why it is best to partition and install 98 on C:?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Excellent post Bruce.

Thank you.

(Alex too). Saved to file.
For clarification: W98 will be looking for and must have a FAT (32) file
system on the primary boot partition of the C: drive regardless of where the
OS files are stored or it won't work?

Correct.

That is why it is best to partition and install 98 on C:?

Again, correct. It allows you to keep it simple.


--

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

 

[Timothy Daniels]

The simplest way I've found to dual boot between Win9x/Me and WinXP
would be to partition your drive(s) roughly as follows:

C: Primary FAT32 Win9x/Me/Legacy Apps
D: Extended NTFS WinXP/Modern Apps

Why did you choose to make the WinXP drive from
an Extended partition and not a Primary partition?
Doesn't that leave the "D:" drive without ntldr, boot.ini,
and ntdetect.com files, and thus not independently
bootable?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

For clarification: W98 will be looking for and must have
a FAT (32) file system on the primary boot partition of
the C: drive regardless of where the OS files are stored
or it won't work?

The bootable partition doesn't have to be called "C:".
It can be anything as long as it's the partition marked
"active" on the hard drive that is at the head of the
hard drive boot sequence (i.e. at the head of the
hard drive priority list in the BIOS). The Master hard
drive on the primary IDE channel is by default at the
head of the boot sequence, and the 1st installed OS
usually the defaults to "C:", and it's usually on the only
partition on the drive and thus automatically marked
"active", but those conditions can easily not be the
case.

That is why it is best to partition and install 98 on C:?

Win98 uses the FAT32 file system and the boot files
are on its partition. What is equaly important, though,
is that WinXP is installed last so the Win98 installation
is seen and the multiboot menu gets set up to include
the Win98 system as a boot option.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Why did you choose to make the WinXP drive from
an Extended partition and not a Primary partition?
Doesn't that leave the "D:" drive without ntldr, boot.ini,
and ntdetect.com files, and thus not independently
bootable?

*TimDaniels*

I've never had a need to make the second partition independently
bootable. It wouldn't hurt to use a second primary partition for the
second OS, though. I just used an extended partition because it allowed
me to keep my partitioning relatively simple (just two partitions) and
still allow multiple logical drives.

It boils down to personal preference, I suppose.

--

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

 

[Mark]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message. Without people like you,
using a computer and maintaining your computer would be very difficult!
Keep up the good work.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!

Mark