Multiple OS's

[mrcoons]

I have ordered a new PC for my wife and it will come with XP installed. I'd like to also put Win98SE on it for her as I suspect several of her favorite applications & games will not work under XP. I am ok with partitioning drives, her new drive will be 80GB and I had planned on setting up at least 3 partitions so I can add a fourth with no problem.
I'm just not sure how one goes about installing a second OS nor how one uses it.
Is there a Microsoft article(s) (or some other article) that anyone could point me to? I know that this is probably to long a topic for this forum, I'm just looking for reference material that you might recommend to me. Thanks.

 

[casper03]

Acronis OS selector will do everything you want to do:
just do a search for it on google

 

[brianF]

If your only going to dual boot between 98 and xp just make sure you install 98 first.
Once 98 is installed on it's own partition you can then run winxp setup from inside win98 and install winxp to a differerent partition. Winxp will notice the other operating system and install the boot loader.

Once this is done the c drive becomes critical as it contains the bootloader files. Windows 98 cannot be reinstall, etc as it will overwrite the files.

Here is a article on dual booting between 2k and 98, basically the same procedure
http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/win2kdualboot/

Dual booting can be a problem because of the boot loader files.
Mine is currently messed up and I can't boot 98, but I don't want to remove it either because of the bootloader files that control booting my 2k.

Better idea was talked about and that is the removalable hard drives.
You load winxp on one hard drive, remove that drive and install another, and load win98 on it.
Both os's are on independant drives and to change you just shutdown and change the hard drive by slipping it out and replacing with the other.
Just an opinion

Like these super swap chassis at promise, scroll down the page a bit and you will see them

http://www.promise.com/Products/Default.htm

 

[casper03]

brian i had the same problems untill i found the acronis program
as far as im aware it find any operating system on the hard drive then makes it bootable:

well it worked for me

 

[brianF]

Not arguing about acronis, never used it. Just posted what I though at the same time you where posting yours.

I have used the drive caddys and they work pretty well

to bad I didn't have it on this machine, one of these days I will go back to trying to repair my win98 partition.

 

[casper03]

just though you may like to try it out
to see if it helped you ...... good luck!

 

[brianF]

If I don't get rid of the windows protection error in 98 I am going to shoot it. Haven't worked on if for awhile, bout time to get back at it.

Thanks, I may check it out

 

[mrcoons]

Reading the information on Acronis joggled my memory that Powerquest has a program called BootMagic that comes with PartitionMagic which I have. So I have the software I need anyway. But my reading brings up a question BrianF. You said to load 98SE first but according to what I've read on Powerquests website you have to load XP to the first partition (or drive if you have multiple drives). Which is correct? It's not a big deal as this PC will have XP pre-loaded on the C partition anyway and 98 will have to go into some other partition.

 

[$teve]

i know just what you mean brian .....ive just had to re-install my win2k/98se drive cos of a similar thing,fortunately i have a fully operational 2k on my second drive so i was able to bring all my stuff over to that one before the roof caved in,but if i had had a gun!!!

all the best for 2002 to everyone

 

[techformed]

I have partition magic & Boot magic with great sucess. I Had 98 Se on my laptop then added Caldera Open Linux to then added Windows 2000. The only draw back whas when I Ghosted I had to do the whole drive. I guess you can use power quests product for each partition but I haven't used that product before...

 

[Dan O]

You can use any boot manager you want but Windows XP comes with one that has already be setup. All you have to do is add one line to the file C:\BOOT.INI, the last statement.

i.e.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINXP
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINXP="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
d:\="Microsoft Windows 98SE"

The file BOOT.INI is a hidden system file, so you will need to change your view options or use the ATTRIB command to change its attributes while you edit it.

Then run SYS D: to make the partition bootable and then install Windows 98 into D:.