New HDD - partitioning for Win98/ XP dual boot and coping over old XP partitions

[Slickone]

My current 40GB HDD has 2 NTFS partitions, w/ WinXP on one, data on the other.
A new HDD, 120GB, will end up with 3 partitions:
1 FAT32 with a fresh Win98 install
2 NTFS copied over from old drive (& larger then the old partitions).

What's the best order do to this? Doesn't the Win98 install need to be before the others are copied over? Should I make all 3 partitions before installing Win98, or make just the partition for 98, install, then make and copy the other two?

I have Partition Magic 8 to partition. Should I also use it to copy over from the old drive or use Ghost 2003 (I have access to)?

Should I disable APIC (not ACPI) since will be dual booting w/ Win98SE? It's currently enabled on my machine.
See http://www.rojakpot.com/ default.aspx?location=1 and http:// forums.rojakpot.com/viewtopic.php?t=117

 

[Lord Evermore]

Win98 does need to be installed before anything else. I suggest not using Partition Magic to create partitions, it seems to be rather buggy and crappy on occasion, making partitions that mostly work but then suddenly you find some utility that doesn't like them, though they may have fixed all that by now. If you do use it, you should probably go ahead and use it to copy the partition over from the old drive.

You may not want to just copy your old partitions, but rather do a complete reinstall. The problem is that if you make the Win98 partition the first partition (which is usually preferred), then WinXP may see that as the C drive, even though it's booting from the second partition. I'm not totally sure of that though, so maybe some more people will see this now and verify it. If XP doesn't see the partitions the same way as they were when you installed it, then it may not work at all, and none of your applications will work right. You could probably fix XP using the Repair option, but that won't fix your applications.

If you can install Win98 on the 3rd partition, then you shouldn't have any major problems, and you can use XP's drive management to change the FAT32 drive letter if your CDROM needs to use the E drive designation.

You can copy the partitions to the new drive at the same time you make the new FAT32 partition. Since copying the partitions doesn't reset the master boot record to work with XP anyway, installing Win98 won't damage anything. Win98 can't see the NTFS drives, so it will just install to the only partition available. After Win98 is installed, you'll need to use the XP CD to boot to the recovery console, and use the "fixmbr" command to make the boot record find the XP install properly again.

After THAT, you'll need to add the Win98 partition as a boot option in WinXP's boot loader. You'll have to look into how to do that yourself. PM8 may be able to do it automatically, it'd be a nice option. You can also use the bootcfg command in the Recovery Console I think to edit the boot.ini file, but I don't think it will automatically set up a Win98 partition.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Oh, and ACPI should be enabled. There's no reason not to use it in Win98.