[annienet]

I have bought an older embroidery machine. The software runs on windows 95 and has a dongle that connects to the printer port. Now my problem is: Should I install a seperate hard drive and run Windows 95 and how do I boot to that hard drive. I have a small HD that I can put in but not sure what I am doing any help is much appreciated. I am running windows XP pro on the computer now.
Thanks in advance

[etaf]

whats the make an model of the PC
what media do you have - do you have a full XP CD and also a full Windows 95 CD or floppies ..

I have bought an older embroidery machine.

Have you contacted the manufacturer to see if they have winXP driver ?

to dual boot you will need to re-install XP and DOS - see here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559

If you replace the harddrive each time - i suspect you WILL damage the PC by keep making the change - I'm trying to think how you might have two harddrives in a PC but use the bios to change ....
i will review and come back - if noone else answers

EDIT
looking on the web, appears that doing this via the bios and boot order does work
So you could set up a bootable windows 95 on that small drive and all the drivers - that may be an additional problem with modern kit and NO 95 driver available
And then you can go into the boot order on the bios and change the boot order - and also enable / disable the harddrive - but that depends on the bios -
whats the make and version of your bios - as the PC boots you should have a message appear for a short period with an option to enter bios/setup - possibly using the F2 or DEL keys

[JoeDreamer]

How about you just install a virtual machine inside of xp?
Its A lot more simpler then just setting up a new partition on your computer

[DoubleHelix]

A virtual system isn't going to work with the specialized hardware.

[JoeDreamer]

Ahh right got ya,
I missed that part about the printer port.
my bad!

[Ed999]

Any software that will run on Windows 95 should run on any version of Windows 9x.

You would therefore be better off installing Windows 98SE since this has the widest level of user support and available software. And there is a lot of advice available on-line about how to dual-boot Windows 98SE and Windows XP.

Windows 95 is a more difficult operating system to use, because it has limited hardware support. It might baulk at running on your WinXP machine, where Win98SE might succeed. There were three versions of Win95 (a, b and c) and two versions of Win98 (Win98, and Win98 Second Edition). So using Win98 Second Edition is the best option: it was Microsoft's 5th attempt at getting it right, and so suffers from fewer faults than the four earlier versions.