OS Installation over a New OS.

PsychoKlown · Apr 30, 2003

I have another question, if you don't mind.

I am running WinXP Home (Haven't done the service pack yet, someday in the future).

Is there a way, or can I install WinME or 98 so I can chose which to boot WITHOUT uninstalling XP and that, as I have the upgrade only, not the full install of XP. I'd like to be able to have 98 or ME because of some software I have that just doesn't work with XP no matter what compatibilty I use. It's an older proggie, so I attribute it to that.

I've read where you can do so, if you have 2 hard drives, which I do, but for the life of me I can't find where I read it.

Can you help me out? I've searched the world over and.... (OOPS! Hadda Hee-Haw moment there, for those of you who are old enough! hahah) I've searched Micro$oft Knowledge Base until I was struck silly, and can't find a thing.

Thanks in advance for your knowledge and wisdom, as it seems to have surpassed my own!

Psycho Klown

Major Attitude · Apr 30, 2003

Hmm, I hope I understood, so here we go. Option 1 would be to go to the store and purchase Partition Magic. This allows you to create a new partition on your hard drive and includes a utility to help you choose which partition (or operating system) to boot. Its definable as to time to wait and default operating system to boot. Should make an image of your drive as a backup first. This is my preferred way myself, I like to keep MP3's and backup files on my second hard drive.

If you want to do it on a second hard drive, you can do that and use a boot utility. Search from the front page for boot managers to go that route:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/search.php?query=Boot+Manager

IMHO, its better to multi boot off a single hard drive if you have a large enough drive. Many boot managers are shareware, so might be better off simply buying Partition Magic anyhow for its boot manager and you might use the partitioning part of the program later. Be careful, first time I bought Partition Magic, I mistakenly bought Partition Commander, which just isnt as good.

snakefoot · May 1, 2003

Also agree with the multi-partition option where each operating system is contained on their own seperate primary partition.

If WinXP is installed on NTFS you can use WinXP own boot manager (It doesn't know how to "hide" drives so it will cause the drive-letters to move around, but Win98 cannot see NTFS so it will make up for it)

1. Create another primary partition on the same hdd as WinXP.
2. Use Fdisk or other partition tool to set this new partition as the active one (Next time you boot it will try to boot from the new partition)
3. Install Win98 on the new partition
4. Use Fdisk or other partition tool to set the WinXP partition to active (Next time you boot it will try to boot from the WinXP partition)
5. Enter recovery console either by running from CD or install it on the WinXP partition and use the command Bootcfg to add Win98 to the WinXP bootmenu.

PsychoKlown · May 1, 2003

thanks for the advice

i thought this could be a simple procedure, but I suppose that was silly of me to think that!

So, after I back up 10 gigs I've downloaded lately, and some ofther important items, I'll give it a shot. I'll keep checking back of course, to see if there is some other fool-proof way to do what I need. I'd rather put it on my spare drive, then I can keep all the 98 proggies with the 98 OS on one drive.

I'm just hoping that something don't happen due to the fact that XP is the upgrade, not the full. But thanks for all the help, I'll use that help wisely and let you know what happens.

PK

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OS Installation over a New OS.

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