Adding Another Os

[Livy]

ive currently got winxp pro on my laptop and wanted win98se on it aswell as xp, for other people using the computer without mucking up my laptop, and also to play about with.
whats the best way to add it without mucking up the startup of xp etc. i was going to just add another partition to the end of my current drive

i also have partition magic, is it best just to use its add another os wizzard.

[Lite]

As far as i know windows 98 HAS to be installed on the first partition of the first volume or you could always use a third party boot manager (which then you could install it elsewhere) ......

A guide can be found here

[Xero Grid]

I've had bad experiences with Partition Magic, but the boot disks it makes have worked great for me. I can give you some options for booting both (The last one may be the way to go).

Yeah, I believe old versions of Windows need to be really close to the front of the hard dive (I forget how many sectors). But, there are sevral choices. You can back up youre data, and format the drive with the Win98SE boot disk and create a FAT32 partition (F-Disk on th CD should be able to do it.) and install it, and then install XP on the remaining space (you can format to NTFS, which is recommended) The NTboot loader will detect any older Windows OS and place them in the boot menu. Alternatively, you can use an installable boot manager like BootIT NextGeneration.

You can also resize the NTFS partition and move it to the back of the drive. I recommend you defrag first for safety and allowing for greater flexability when dealing with space. You can then install Windows 98SE on the space left at the front of the drive, but you will need to either use a boot manager (there are free ones) or the XP NTboot loader. I'm not sure if you just have to edit the boot.INI file on the XP partiton or if it is more involved. Just google it.

FINALLY, my favororite way. You don't need to risk your data AT ALL! Use a program like VMware to install it virtually and you can run it from XP. It works VERY well. There is a free alternative called Bochs, but I've never actually done anything with it. I really like VMware.

If you need some bootable tools that need diskettes, you don't need to go buy a big stack of diskettes. Just use The Ultimate Boot CD. Hope that helps.

-- Xero Grid --

[firefox]

for playing around with it I would use VMware and use a virtual machine. Search google for info on vmware

[Livy]

i would prefer to do it at the end of the drive, or inbetween my xp and backup partition,

my hdd is 20 gig and 15gig is allocated to the backup partition and the rest for xp. which is about 3.6 gig.

[tesco]

you can use partition magic to make a new primary partition in front of the windows xp partition, then install windows 98 to that partition, once 98 is done installing you run a repair install of windows xp and it will fix the boot thingy to make windows xp startup. that is the easiest way I have found, other than using vmware.

[Livy]

is it possible to boot to windows 98 using a floppy disk? coz i would rather do that than having it "dual boot" if u know what i mean.

[Xero Grid]

Yeah, you can have a boot manager on floppy. I've never done that specifically, but maybe Smart Boot Manager or Gujin may help.

-- Xero Grid --