Is it worth setting up a dual boot Win98SE / Win ME PC, or 98SE / Win2K

[mitchelt]

System: P3-600E, Asus P3B-F Mobo, 256Meg Ram, Dual 20Gig Ibm Drives, Matrox G400-TV

I currently run Win98SE and I am pretty happy, I do a lot of graphics including 2D, 3D and Video Editing. Recently my system seems to be running slow and having memory issues. I think part of it is probably I have a tendency of downloading a lot of trial software and removing it so I probably have a like of "leftover" junk and I probably need to reload my system...it's been about 1 year since I loaded the OS.

Anyway, my question, would I benefit any performance if I dual-booted my PC with ME or 2K and 98SE and ran the graphic programs under ME or 2K and games under 98SE (at least the ones that might have issues with ME)?

Would ME or 2K take advantage of more memory, like if I added another 256Meg?

Also, any tips on how to create a dual boot pc, which OS gets loaded first?

Thanks!!

Mitch

 

[igiveup]

Well, trial software is typically one step above the beta level. Barely a "gold" code release. To top it off, win me or any of the 9x kernels, allow the software to replace parts of the OS when they install. These two things make the OS less stable as it tries to access components that were there before but were replaced by another software company when you installed the software.

To answer your questions: Win 2000 might possibly be able to benefit more with 512 MB RAM, especially if you do video editing, or any type of graphics intensive work. The other great thing about win 2000 is that it monitors all software installations and if a program overwrites or otherwise modifies a system file it immediately goes and gets a replacement after installation is overwith. I don't even know if win me can use all 256mb of ram that you have. I have a pII 400 with 256mb and 98 would give me out of memory errors when running ms photodraw of all things. Went to 2000, no problems. As for the slow performance of you current machine, try defragging. Thats about all you can do.

To set up a dual boot just install your win me (if you wanted a clean istall of that too) and then win 2000. Win 2000 will see your first OS and then it will alter the MBR and you will get an option at boot up. Its usually best to do each on its own partition though. You can do em together but it keeps things cleaner.

 

[mitchelt]

Seeing that I like to also play games, do you think it is wise to keep Win98SE?

 

[Suppafly]

forget winME altogether.. you wont get any real advantages over win98se..

id use partition magic to setup your partitions for 98 and win2k and then install 98 first and then win2k since win2k will let you pick which partition to install too.. i imagine youll find that most of your stuff will work in win2k and eventually you may want to just go win2k all the way.. nearly all popular games work under win2k.. and most of your software should and a lot of times will work better due to the better threading in win2k.

 

[Raincity]

Apps like Photoshop and Bryce run like a dream for me in Win2k. I would not even bother with Win98 or Winme unless there is some game or app that will not run in Win2k that you can not live without. You can also run another install of Win2k just to try out your shareware apps without commiting them to your main win2k install. You dont need Partition Magic to setup Win2k. The diskpart utility in Win2k will work just fine.

Rain