moving from windows XP to 98/XP dual boot

[Titan]

My main rig runs Vista x64 and XP x64 and I'm dusting off an old high-end socket A Athlon system I have for some retro gaming. I have XP Pro installed to an 80gb drive for the OS.

Since the hardware is old, I can find 98 drivers for it. But I thought 98 has to install first as it always uses C:\ and sets up the MBR.

I would prefer not to wipe my current XP install as I have my Tetris scores on it, and they are hidden somewhere in the registry, never been able to find them. Sounds silly, but I am the tetris master and have some old scores. It's an old 16-bit windows app version.

I'm thinking I could partition magic the drive, save an image of the XP install, then install 98, and maybe re-image XP on top of it. Or maybe I should get a second hard drive, make it device 0 and boot from that for 98. I just remembered I have an old 80gb in my desk.

Can this be done? I'm still pretty green when it comes to setting boot loaders up.

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: Titan
My main rig runs Vista x64 and XP x64 and I'm dusting off an old high-end socket A Athlon system I have for some retro gaming. I have XP Pro installed to an 80gb drive for the OS.

Since the hardware is old, I can find 98 drivers for it. But I thought 98 has to install first as it always uses C:\ and sets up the MBR.

I would prefer not to wipe my current XP install as I have my Tetris scores on it, and they are hidden somewhere in the registry, never been able to find them. Sounds silly, but I am the tetris master and have some old scores. It's an old 16-bit windows app version.

I'm thinking I could partition magic the drive, save an image of the XP install, then install 98, and maybe re-image XP on top of it. Or maybe I should get a second hard drive, make it device 0 and boot from that for 98. I just remembered I have an old 80gb in my desk.

Can this be done? I'm still pretty green when it comes to setting boot loaders up.

why do you care about tetris score on it? Are you trying to write off at Guiness record?

 

[jdjbuffalo]

I would consider using VMWare Workstation or a similar product. This way you can use your current computer and run Windows 98 or Windows XP games in the VM. VMWare has support for DirectX 9.0c. If you are talking really old games then I'm sure you could run them in software emulation mode and still get a good game experience. I know there are several websites out there of people who do this sort of thing. A quick Google search should get you to the right places.

 

[Athena]

The last time I tried to create a Win98 VM in VMWare, I couldn't get it to boot from the media. That's what I use VPC2007 for -- but it's DirectX support is rather iffy.

 

[redbeard1]

Petri

Dougknox

In the end, without using a boot manager, loading 98 first and then XP is the simplest.

 

[gpusavat]

Help! How do you remove a dual boot setup? I have a WINDOWS XP2 setup and accidentally click a new install for WINDOWS XP3 which did not complete (aborted when mistake was realised) Upon rebooting, instead of booting directly into WINDOWS XP2, I have a menu for booting into either WINDOWS XP2 or WINDOWS XP3 install

Can anyone help to remedy this? Many thanks!

 

[redbeard1]

Originally posted by: gpusavat
Help! How do you remove a dual boot setup? I have a WINDOWS XP2 setup and accidentally click a new install for WINDOWS XP3 which did not complete (aborted when mistake was realised) Upon rebooting, instead of booting directly into WINDOWS XP2, I have a menu for booting into either WINDOWS XP2 or WINDOWS XP3 install

Can anyone help to remedy this? Many thanks!

Usually you would want to start a new topic for your issues.

Boot.ini explained

When the extra Windows installation ran, it created an entry in the boot.ini with to tell the OS boot where it was going to be. This entry is what is fooling the boot up into thinking that there is two installs of Windows. Editing this file is not be be done lightly, as screwing it up prevents the system from booting into Windows.

Having the boot menu come up does not hurt anything, it is just annoying. In the link it describes how you can set one Windows install as default. Setting the original Windows installation default may be the safest if you are concerned with editing this file to remove the new "install" from the .ini. Setting it to default just means it is first in the boot list.

 

[gpusavat]

Thanks for the tip Selecting the initial install makes it bearable but was unable to remove the other install without Windows XP2 failing to boot by editing the boot.ini file

My impression is that although I have edited away the other windows XP3 it is behaving like it was booting from the Windows XP3 menu

Any ideas? Thanks!