Reformat and duel boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mother Farquhar
  • Start date Start date
M

Mother Farquhar

Hey there,

I'm sick and tired of half my games not working on XP so instead I'd like to
use 98/XP as a duel boot. I'm just wondering how hard this will be? Do you
think it will be too difficult for a relative beginner? I have some sort of
minimal experience of formatting, having done it with a 98 machine, but I
have no idea of the pit-falls of a duel boot environment and I'm still
getting used to XP.

What do you think?

Thanks
 
Hi,

It's not too difficult, even for a beginner. There are a few caveats though.
First and foremost, to do this without using a third-party boot manager the
primary boot partition must be using the FAT32 file system. Win98 cannot be
loaded from an NTFS partition. Also, you must have a second partition in
FAT32 for the Win98 installation, or have free space on the drive in which
to create one. There are a few quirks to the install, and MVP Doug Knox
covers it here:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

If you have no free space available on the drive, or the primary boot
partition is using NTFS, you will need third-party help. Here are several
partitioning programs and boot managers, all of which can do what you ask.
While Partition Magic is the most expensive, it is also the easiest to use
for new users. My preference is BootIT NG, but it requires a bit more
knowledge about drive structure.

Boot Managers and Partitioning programs:

BootIT NG www.terabyteunlimited.com
Partition Magic www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic
Partition Commander http://www.v-com.com/product/pc_ind.html

Each of these also includes instructions about how to install different
operating systems using their product. You should follow them implicitly.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Rick "Nutcase" Rogers said:
Hi,

It's not too difficult, even for a beginner. There are a few caveats though.
First and foremost, to do this without using a third-party boot manager the
primary boot partition must be using the FAT32 file system. Win98 cannot be
loaded from an NTFS partition. Also, you must have a second partition in
FAT32 for the Win98 installation, or have free space on the drive in which
to create one. There are a few quirks to the install, and MVP Doug Knox
covers it here:
Click to expand...


Many thanks. It doesn't seem quite as impossbile as I thought it would be.
 
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