using an old OS on XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Cunningham
  • Start date Start date
[snip]

Now what exactly is "Syncback"? I've never heard of that one.
Click to expand...

Oh it is one of the best! It will do backup and restores, but it will
sync too. The free version I use won't do anything with files in use
like system files and such (the commercial version will, which I have
little experience with), but I sync my data when the files isn't in use
anyway.

SyncBack has so many options that it will make most super advanced users
happy, yet it is also simple enough to make novice users happy. They are
real pros in this department. I measure everything compared to SyncBack.
And fast? Yes very! Most of my data doesn't change and it can sync tons
of GBs in seconds as long as most of it doesn't change. It is really
worth looking into.

SyncBack
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html
 
Okay that opens lots of different forks in the road. Which way do you want
to go? What do you exactly want to go for example?
Click to expand...

Well I have noticed this for starters. Formating a new filesystem with
fat32 will work with XP but the system hangs and stops installing. With ntfs
it continues. Winows seems to be the only OS that can't handle a large fat32
filsystem and I think fat32 goes up to 1 TB. Is there a way around that?
 
Well I have noticed this for starters. Formating a new filesystem with
fat32 will work with XP but the system hangs and stops installing. With ntfs
it continues. Winows seems to be the only OS that can't handle a large fat32
filsystem and I think fat32 goes up to 1 TB. Is there a way around that?
Click to expand...

Whoa! How large is this FAT32 partition for starters? I never had a
problem with XP installing in a more than a 32GB FAT32 already made
partition before, but I never tried up to an 1TB partition before.
 
If it was me, I would install VirtualBox and install it in there. It's
a great place to test all types of different operating systems, from
Windows to Linux, and even Macintosh.
Click to expand...

Where could you get a Macintosh OS? Online or buy it from Apple? That's
how much I know about them.

Bill
 
Where could you get a Macintosh OS? Online or buy it from Apple? That's
how much I know about them.
Click to expand...

I am sure this is old school, but this is what I know. Apple like
Commodore didn't care whatsoever if you pirated their operating system.
Commodore even wrote applications and they didn't care if you pirated
them either. As Commodore claimed they were in the hardware business and
only wrote OS and applications to support their hardware. What you did
with them is up to you.

Apple viewed it the same way with their OS. They just didn't care. That
is unless you crossed that line and were using them on non theirs
hardware (same with Commodore). Now they have a huge problem and don't
like that one bit. Both Apple and Commodore went after ones that
targeted non their machines and won easily.

So what I am saying in the end, as you don't qualify owing the OS unless
through a hardware purchase, I don't think it is legal through any other
means.
 
Whoa! How large is this FAT32 partition for starters? I never had a
problem with XP installing in a more than a 32GB FAT32 already made
partition before, but I never tried up to an 1TB partition before.
Click to expand...

My HD is only 200 GB. And XP has formatted the entire thing with fat32.
but of course. It hangs when it restarts to install. I have always heard the
*capability* of fat32 was up there a ways. Now as far as efficiency that
might be another matter. fat16 can do more than MS's limitations. Of course
we're dealing with XP here and I might not want a partition formatted with
fat32 any larger than 1-2 GB. That's alot for 98se. XP seems to format it
but will not install on it.

Bill
 
Windows 98SE is stuck with only using the first 128GB of the drive. So it
must be within this first part and can't see further than this. I believe
there are hacks around this problem if you need more.
Click to expand...

What kind of hacks?

Bill
 
Bill said:
My HD is only 200 GB. And XP has formatted the entire thing with fat32.
but of course. It hangs when it restarts to install. I have always heard the
*capability* of fat32 was up there a ways. Now as far as efficiency that
might be another matter. fat16 can do more than MS's limitations. Of course
we're dealing with XP here and I might not want a partition formatted with
fat32 any larger than 1-2 GB. That's alot for 98se. XP seems to format it
but will not install on it.

Bill
Click to expand...

Sure it will. Success.

http://i58.tinypic.com/1xx79j.gif

I have a good idea what happened.

*******

Not all WinXP discs support "large drives". My install
was done with a WinXP SP3 disc. You could use NLite
and integrate SP3 into your existing CD contents, then
burn a new installer CD. Once you install with that,
you can have your large partition.

I slaved the drive in question to my existing setup,
and created the two partitions. I set the Active bit
on the first partition (probably not all that important).
I used the fat32format program to make C: a large
FAT32 ( >32GB, less than 2.2TB ). You can use Windows
to format < 32GB, to FAT32. To trick the machine
into allowing this, I created the large partition
as NTFS, then used fat32format to make it FAT32
right after that.

To learn more about large disk support, see the Seagate
document, now archived. While page 2 says "SP1", by using
at least a WinXP SP2 installer CD, you avoid any
registry nonsense. Either SP2 or SP3 would do.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070121085230/http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf

To make a slipstreamed CD, you can start here.

http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part1.html

And these links give you SP2 and SP3 as EXE files
for usage with NLite. I don't keep testing these
links, and some day, Microsoft will remove them.

This is SP2.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28

WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe 278,927,592 bytes

This is SP3.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24

WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe 331,805,736 bytes

If you have a WinXP Gold (original RTM CD), then the
slipstreaming process is a little more complicated. If
I had such a disc, I would de-risk the experiment by grabbing
SP2 and slipstreaming that first. Burn a new CD.
If the installation works, you can then apply SP3 manually
while the new WinXP SP2 install is running.

The whole purpose of slipstreaming in the first place,
is to solve this "large disk problem", so having an SP3 CD
isn't an absolute requirement. But I'd still install SP3
..exe afterwards.

If you had an SP1 or SP1a CD, as far as I can remember,
you can slipstream SP3 on that.

If you do not have "large disk support" in place, and
have large data disks connected to the computer while
the install is taking place, there's a chance of
corruption. And this is yet another reason, for
disconnecting other drives until the installation
is finished (properly). I've learned to disconnect
non-essential drives the hard way, by mucking things up.

In terms of what configurations are corruption prone, I'll
make up an example. Say you have a 500GB hard drive,
and intend to connect it to a WinXP Gold RTM system.
Make the first partition 80GB, the second partition
200GB, the third partition 220GB. Now, the second
partitions "spans" the 137GB mark. WinXP is smart enough
to know whole partitions below 137GB are OK. But when
a partition spans 137GB, the OS checks that the origin
of the partition is below 137GB, but doesn't check where
the other end sits. As soon as a large address is issued
above 137GB, the address rolls over (not enough bits
to represent address), and some writes happen closer to
sector 0 of the disk. If you're surgically accurate,
you could overwrite the MBR for example. There are
other possibilities. I tested this once for fun, and
I think it broke right away in my test case. That's
how I know the spanning case, is a bad one.

Again, using that 500GB disk as an example, if I placed
an 80GB partition near the start of the drive, and
used no other partitions at all on it, then the 80GB
partition is perfectly safe with any WinXP. And if
I placed a partition completely above 137GB, like
starting at 200GB mark and going to 400GB, WinXP RTM
would not mount that or touch it. It would be safe
as well. But if you span a partition across 137GB,
then it corrupts.

Your 200GB partition suffered the corruption
problem of non-large-disk support, instantly.
A new CD with Service Pack, will fix that.

HTH,
Paul
 
Bill said:
Where could you get a Macintosh OS? Online or buy it from Apple? That's
how much I know about them.

Bill
Click to expand...

Why would you even want to ?

MacOSX is fine if you have a large collection of
compatible software, to make it worthwhile running
the OS. The software that comes with the OS is
relatively ordinary, and not a strong reason
to set it up. The Mac probably has a better
video editor than Windows has (and what is
bundled has varied with version of OS). But
I don't think there is anything else of note.
Just lots of similar things you would have found
on Windows. Windows, you can get Irfanview,
on Macintosh, GraphicConverter would be an
equivalent.

Otherwise, if you want to see MacOSX, go to the
Apple store and play with their display units.
Or perhaps Best Buy has a Mac section ? That'll
answer whether it's worth getting for your
OS collection or not.

*******

If you want to learn more, a useful keyword
for your search engine is "hackintosh". Apparently
some versions of the OS are really conducive to
this sort of experimentation. Older versions
required the right kind of hardware/motherboard.
But you can find claims that some versions of
the OS are better suited for non-Apple setups.

http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required

Paul
 
BillW50 said:
I am sure this is old school, but this is what I know. Apple like
Commodore didn't care whatsoever if you pirated their operating system.
Commodore even wrote applications and they didn't care if you pirated them
either. As Commodore claimed they were in the hardware business and only
wrote OS and applications to support their hardware. What you did with
them is up to you.

Apple viewed it the same way with their OS. They just didn't care. That is
unless you crossed that line and were using them on non theirs hardware
(same with Commodore). Now they have a huge problem and don't like that
one bit. Both Apple and Commodore went after ones that targeted non their
machines and won easily.

So what I am saying in the end, as you don't qualify owing the OS unless
through a hardware purchase, I don't think it is legal through any other
means.
Click to expand...

I see. Of course though Linux Distros come with no hardware but I guess
you would abide by a copyleft agreement or the distros agreement.
I remember the old VIC20s and C64s. There wasn't an OS there if I
remember. Just a Basic Interpreter burned onto ROM.

Bill
 
Paul said:
Sure it will. Success.

http://i58.tinypic.com/1xx79j.gif

I have a good idea what happened.
Click to expand...

[snip]

I have no SP3 out for my XP. I'm pretty sure. I have XP Pro. x64
Edition. Now my computer came with XP MCE SP2. But the CDs are not working
on that. They must be scratched. So all I have is my x64 XP CD. And a SP2
update.

Bill
 
Bill said:
Paul said:
Sure it will. Success.

http://i58.tinypic.com/1xx79j.gif

I have a good idea what happened.
Click to expand...

[snip]

I have no SP3 out for my XP. I'm pretty sure. I have XP Pro. x64
Edition. Now my computer came with XP MCE SP2. But the CDs are not working
on that. They must be scratched. So all I have is my x64 XP CD. And a SP2
update.

Bill
Click to expand...

You'll need to check the nlite site, to see if it
supports x64 or not. And then, if it does, slipstream
in the SP2 .exe file.

An alternative, is to define a 120GB partition on the oversized
drive, leaving the end of the drive empty. Your oldest WinXP CD
should work with that, no problem, and no registry settings.
Just don't put a partition resting on the 137GB mark. A 120GB
partition, would stay clear of that mark, and be completely
contained in the "safe" area.

Still, not a problem.

Either use the installer, and see if you can define a partition
size. Or, use some other OS to prepare the drive, make a 120GB
NTFS partition, then use the Ridgecrop fat32format program to turn
the new empty partition into a 120GB FAT32 partition. If that's what
you want.

Paul


Paul
 
[snip]
Either use the installer, and see if you can define a partition
size. Or, use some other OS to prepare the drive, make a 120GB
NTFS partition, then use the Ridgecrop fat32format program to turn
the new empty partition into a 120GB FAT32 partition. If that's what
you want.
Click to expand...

I'm only wondering about one thing. What are you going to be running and
where in order to call the fat32format.exe ? If I formatted ntfs I would
have to install some windows to run the fat32format.exe. If I do it the
alternative way that you're speaking of. Are you not talking about install
win98se first? And I checked the nlite software and it supports the 64 bit
processor. I was thinking about maybe 2 G in the first partition for
win98se. Or win95. Is win95 the one that has the conversaion program from
fat16 to fat32? I remember one did. My win95 is a full install and my 98se
an upgrade disk.

Bill
 
Oh PS yes I have linux and some 3rd party software to do this. But
fat32format.exe will need to be run from windows.

Bill
 
Bill said:
Oh PS yes I have linux and some 3rd party software to do this. But
fat32format.exe will need to be run from windows.

Bill
Click to expand...

If you're planning on installing Win98, you'd do that first.

The more modern OS goes in second.

Maybe fat32format runs in Win98 ? Don't know. A Linux LiveCD
could do it, but... beware. The GParted on Ubuntu 14.04
crashed on me. It's been pretty good up to now (older
versions of GParted).

There are plenty of ways to make FAT32 partitions.
There is nothing magic about fat32format, except
it is damn fast (2 seconds). It just dumps a FAT
table into the appropriate space, the equivalent
of a "quick" format.

If I had, say, a 500GB drive, I'd install Win98
first in a 2GB partition, install WinXP next
in a 30GB partition. Making sure that no partition
gets near the 137GB mark. If no info is stored "up
high", then no out-of-bounds LBA addresses need
be generated. Even if Win98 doesn't have detection
code to prevent problems, as long as all the partitions
it sees live below 137GB, the data should be safe.

The last Win98 install I did, was to a year 2000
4GB hard drive. At around 8MB/sec or so. I tried
it out on a Core2 running at 2.6GHz. Win98 only
recognizes one core of your processor.

Paul
 
I tried a partition the 120 and 140 GB sizes and by golly XP gave me an
option to install fat32. Now if one expanded that partition if they wanted
to, would they need to reformat the fat32 partition?

Bill
 
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