I want to dual boot SE and XP... I am so lost.

[murphy55d]

I want to set up a dual boot system with 98SE and XP Pro. Currently I only have XP Pro installed on my main hard drive. I have 2 hard drives, one 40gb and one 80gb. I tried running fdisk on my XP drive, then installing 98SE onto that one, but I run into issues as 98SE setup says I have Windows NT files on there, and won't continue. Can anyone give a step by step procedure for setting this up? Do I need to actually go to a DOS prompt and format this drive first? What exactly do I need to do then? go to a prompt, type 'format c:' ? Never done it, not exactly sure of the proper command to do that.

Can anyone give me an exact rundown of the steps I need to take to get this to work?

Thank you SO much.

 

[Chipster]

Here are some links for you murphy. I always thought you had to have 98 installed first but maybe there is away around that,I'm just not sure .

Some links: good luck.

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[murphy55d]

Well I think you do. However, I'm not quite sure how to go about erasing all traces of XP to be able to install 98 first. I'm gonna check out those links, thanks.

 

[wjsulliv]

You need to explain the situation a little more...

Is your XP drive NTFS or Fat32?

Did you run fdisk from inside XP or from a boot disk?

Is XP currently installed on any disk? Do you want to reinstall it or simply maintain it, while adding 98SE also?

How are your two hard drives set up? (I.e. 40 gig as a single partition running XP on NTFS, 80 gig cut into 2 partitions, one of 60 gig and the other 20 gig, both fat32, etc.)


Basically, if you were starting from scratch, nothing installed. I would do the following.
Note you will need a Win 98/Me boot disk to do this.)
Assuming you have the 40 gig set up as the master and 80 gig as the slave, and you intend to keep XP as a long term OS (eventually dump Win 98SE

1) Partition your two drives into three pieces (total), one for 98SE, one for XP and one for files.
- Like cut the 40 gig drive into two 20 gig partitions for the OS's, and keep the 80 gig whole for files.
- Use fdisk to do this.

2) Format them all for FAT32, that way all files, etc can be shared back and forth, and you can access each OS from the other OS in case you didn't save something to the file drive.
- To do this from the a: prompt type 'format c:', this will bring up a couple or warning message about losing data, just procede and format the drive. Repeat this for all the other drives/partitions.

3) Install Win 98SE to the d: partition. Yes, the d: partition. - From the a:, with the Win98SE disk in the cd-rom, type setup.exe, to start the setup program. Then during the setup watch for a choice to install to a different location. When this option appears, tell it you want to install it to the d: partition (the second 20 gig partition).
- Procede to install all your drivers and programs for Win 98SE as if this was the only OS you were going to use. When you open my computer, you should have an almost empty 20 gig c: drive, a d: drive with Win 98SE, and an empty 80 gig eL: drive.
- Note: even though there are ways to install applications so that both OS's can use only one single copy (I.e. install Office once from each OS so that only one copy of Office is installed on the machine), I recommend against it. While installing programs in this way saves disk space, and is relatively easy to do, uninstalling/upgrading them is very difficult. It is a lot easier to just install them twice, you have the disk space.

4) Once you've got everything setup completely in 98SE on the d: drive (there should be nothing or almost nothing on the c: and e: drives) install XP on the c: drive.
- To do this boot into 98SE, and insert the XP disk. This should autoload and bring up a menu to upgrade or fresh install to a different drive. Select to install to a different drive, and tell it to install to the c: drive. XP will automatically make a boot loader for you, preserving settings so you can boot XP or 98SE.
- Install XP and all your applications/updates/drivers.

Now you should have a complete OS on c: (Win XP) with all needed applications, and a complete OS on d: (Win 98SE) with all needed applications, and a blank 80 gig e: drive for files.



If your not starting from scrach, there are some other things to do.

 

[murphy55d]

Alright...

Currently, I have XP Pro installed as NTFS on my 40GB hard drive. I could care less if I have to erase it, that is no major loss, as all my data is backed up already on my laptop.

I ran fdisk from a boot disk.

Does this change what I need to do from what you already listed?

 

[murphy55d]

Ok let me simplify..

How do I go about formatting and erasing EVERYTHING on BOTH my hard drives so I can just start from scratch and install 98SE? I started with a boot disk in, went to a prompt and typed format c: and NOTHING happened. Bad command or file name. Give the instructions to me in baby steps, because I obviously must be doing something wrong here.

I am starting to get agitated with this stupid thing. :disgust:

 

[wjsulliv]

Ok to partition and format both drives you will need a Windows 98, 98SE, or Me boot disk (atleast to do it this way).

1) Put the boot disk in the drive and boot the machine.
2) If you are just partitioning and formating then you can select 'with out cd-rom support' , if you intend to install 98 immediately then select 'with cd-rom support'
3) When you get to the dos prompt type fdisk, and then set up your partitions as desired.
4) As prompted by fdisk, reboot with the boot disk still in the drive.
5) When you return to the dos prompt type format x:, where x is each successive drive. This should format the system using fat32.

What kind of boot disk have you been using?

 

[murphy55d]

The one which came with my Win98SE CD.

 

[wjsulliv]

The one which came with my Win98SE CD.

That boot disk should work.

If it doesn't, set up your computer to boot from cd-rom and boot it with the XP disk in the cd-rom. Then begin the setup process for XP, which will begin with allowing you to format your partitions.disk. Format them all as fat32 and then exit installation, then fdisk and format using the boot disk from win 98SE.

 

[Daboo]

There are two ways to do what you want to do, ie, install a dual-boot operating system with WinXP already installe. wjsulliv mentioned the inexpensive way. Low cost, but time consuming. Unfortunately, you need to start with a clean drive and install Win9X on it first before installing WinXP.

The only other way I know of, is to use a disk-partioning utility. Partition Magic is one. There are some shareware versions also.

One other alternative, is to really ask yourself why you need Win9X anymore. I've found very few things that wouldn't install on WinXP by using the compatibility mode. Sometimes you may find you'll also have to change the compatibility settings on the other executables besides SETUP.EXE to get the program to install.

Good luck!