Wm. R. Taylor said:
I have been happily using XP for several months, but I need to reinstal Win98
because some of my older games will not work at all under XP (even with an
emulator like DosBox or VDMSound).
Here's my current HDD setup:
HDD0: 40 GB, single partition (C
, bootable, NTFS, where XP is.
HDD1: 30 GB, partitioned at D:-G:, all FAT32. D: is where I plan to put Win98.
1st off, is it possible to reinstall 98 without ripping out XP?
As your current system is, I'm afraid not. Had your C: been formatted
in FAT32, it would have been possible. (Win98 *must* place its boot
files on C:, and cannot read NTFS.)
2nd, should I even do it?
Only you can determine if the entertainment and pleasure those old
games provide are worth a few hours effort.
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
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