Windows XP- 98se dual boot?

Yes, install Windows 98.  Then when you install windows xp, choose to do a "clean install" and make sure you install it somewhere other than "C:\windows" something like "C:\winxp" or whatever you want.  And you can install your applications in the same locations in both OS's.

Although 3.6GB is pretty small for installing both.  But as long as you don't have a whole lot of applications to install, I think they will fit.

Also, be sure you don't convert the drive to NTFS, use FAT32.

Basically partition the drive as you have outlined. Next Install Win98. If your system doesn't suppot booting to the CD then boot to a Win98 bootdisk www.bootdisk.com and after it gets to the prompt but in the Win98 CD then type in at the prompt.

x:\setup

x denotes the CD drive letter.
remove the floppy disk.

After Win98 finishes then boot again to the boot disk and put in the XP CD and then type in

x:\i386\winnt.exe
remove the floppy disk.

Or you can start Win98 and Install XP from there.

XP will see the Win98 installation and will see the other partition. Instruct XP to install on the other partition.

BTW XP will most likely take up close to 1GB of space so you may want to rethink the how size the partitions.

Umm Crash KarlAibling is intending on partitioning the drive. :>)

>>>I expect to partition it: 2GB for XP and 1GB for 98se.

I saw that, but with such limited disk space, I would use a single partition, so the OS's can share it to the max.

Not a bad idea but this can lead to trouble down the road. Using the same partition after a time requires somtimes manipulating things like both OS's use the folder Progam Files\Common files and few other goodies. It takes some effort to have both to coexist on the same partition peacefully but as you indicated it can be done.

Personally since this is a fresh start I would recommend partioning the disk so each OS can have its own space so to speak. Makes it easier for troubleshooting and in this case the space not used on the Win98 partition can be used by XP for programs and data files.

My Concern is since the disk is only 3.6GB if this came with the machine in question, if so this machine may be to old and not meet the requirements and compatibilty for XP.
 
Windows XP Upgrade Advisor

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/matrix.asp
Check for Upgrade Eligibility
"Upgrading from Previous Versions of Windows" tells you if your version of Windows can be upgraded to Windows XP Professional

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Utility/1.0/WXP/EN-US/UpgAdv.exe  Download the Upgrade Advisor
If your version is eligible for upgrade, download the Upgrade Advisor. You can choose to save the file to your hard disk and run it locally, or open it directly from the Web.

Why not get a second HDD for the XP? Leave the W98 drive as it is, and install the XP on a second slave drive. For $60 you can get a 30 GB drive. 2GB for XP is simply too small to be practical.

KarlAibling it would be helpful if you gave us some info about your machine. The following is the minimum requirement. I agree with public you need a larger hard drive or make the the Win98 partition smaller like maybe 750MB's. If you aren't going to use Win98 for much you probably could get by with around 600MB's for Win98.

Windows XP Home Edition System Requirements
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/evaluation/sysreqs.asp

"Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Home Edition
PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device "

[TNPC] Grisoft AVG, WinXP Upgrades, Users & IT, Money & Quicken  
Date: 1/31/2002 9:20:54 AM Pacific Standard Time

eXPeriencing Windows XP: Upgrading Over an Earlier Version
       of Windows (by Al Gordon)

Here's the word on installing your Windows XP upgrade over your
existing Windows installation:

Don't.

The equation is very simple. Windows XP is a significantly more
stable OS than Windows ME (Millennium Edition) and Windows 9x,
and more compatible with common applications than Windows 2000.
Plus it has features to protect crucial operating system files
against corruption, including being overwritten by other software
installations. To take full advantage of those capabilities,
therefore, you want to get rid of all the junk--bad drivers and
DLLs, unneeded and duplicate files, obsolete or corrupt Registry
settings, etc.--that might be clogging your system.

In other words, you need to get rid of the old junk--if only to
make way for new junk--and an "up and over" upgrade doesn't cut
it.

* * * *       *      *     *
If you absolutely need to cling to your legacy installation, the
better option is to remember that multi-booting is built into XP.
So when you do your installation, ignore the "recommendation" to
install over your existing OS and have XP Setup do a clean
install into a separate partition. A big help here is PowerQuest
Partition Magic 7.0, which will let you partition a hard drive
without losing any of your existing data.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/503/tr.cgi?al2
****************************************************

Scot's Newsletter - 2-14-2002  
Date: 2/14/2002 8:13:32 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: sfnl@scotfinnie.com

HOW TO MAKE NTFS GO FASTER
-------------------------------------------------------------------

In the last two issues of this newsletter I've run one of my
inadvertent series -- this one on Windows XP's NTFS file system. I
had no idea I was about to touch off an avalanche of questions and
reveal a large problem for Windows XP users. Or even better, that I
was about to publish an NTFS performance solution.

I explained about cluster sizes in NTFS in the first in the series:

http://www.scotfinnie.com/newsletter/19.htm#filesys

In short, Windows XP's NTFS file system is even more storage
efficient than Win98's FAT32. And it can be at least as fast as
FAT32. It's also more reliable. But there is one very big problem.
When you install Windows XP as an upgrade of a previous version of
Windows running FAT16 or FAT32 and convert to NTFS as part of setup
or after the fact, in most cases you end up with tiny 512-byte
cluster sizes. This occurs because of the way the data is aligned on
the disk and the NTFS conversion process as carried out by
Microsoft's Convert utility. PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 7.0 uses
the Microsoft utility, so it has the same issues.

The surprising truth is that some new PCs also arrive with 512-byte
cluster sizes. So if you've got a new Windows XP box that runs slow,
you should definitely check out what I'm about to explain.

In the last issue, I alluded to a possible solution:

http://www.scotfinnie.com/newsletter/20.htm#filesys

A little-known program called Paragon Partition Manager, created by
a group of Russian programmers working for Paragon Software, has in
its latest version, 5.0, added the ability to dynamically adjust
cluster sizes.

Paragon Partition Manager 5.0:
http://www.partition-manager.com/n_pm_main.htm

Paragon Partition Manager 5.0 Features Details:
http://www.partition-manager.com/n_pm_requir.htm

Paragon Partition Manager isn't generally marketed in the U.S.,
although you can purchase it on the Internet, where it sells for
about $40:

Where To Buy Paragon Partition Manager:
http://www.partition-manager.com/n_pm_buy.htm

None of the popular disk utilities marketed in the U.S. is capable
of pulling off this feat yet. But Partition Manager does it, and
does it well.

To prove the point, I acquired a copy of Paragon Partition Manager
5.0 from the company and configured a test system. I had an existing
drive containing a clean Windows 98 Second Edition installation on
my trusty Compaq Armada 700 (the best Compaq product I've ever
worked with) notebook PC. I ran a standard Windows XP upgrade
installation, which took a while, but completed just fine. I also
converted to NTFS. When all the files were copied and the changes
made, it was immediately apparent to me that my performance eroded
markedly. It took Windows forever to load, and disk-intensive tasks
ran like molasses in January. In fact, I was surprised by how slow
the machine became. I had been led to believe that 512-byte clusters
slowed the machine down incrementally, but the reality was much
worse.

Next I used Windows' Disk Defragmenter to check the cluster size on
my hard disk. To do that, you open Disk Defragmenter from Start > 
All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.
Right-click the appropriate drive and choose Analyze. When the
analysis is complete, click the View Report button. There you see a
line that reads Cluster Size = XX KB. In my case, it showed 512-
bytes, the smallest, slowest cluster size NTFS allows. The optimum
size is 4K clusters.

I was ready to try Paragon Partition Manager. I'll tell you upfront
that there are two problems with this product. The first is the user
interface, which needs help. But it's usable. The second is that
before you make the cluster size change, block out several hours of
time for your PC. Overnight might be a good idea. You may save
yourself some time by running a defrag before you run the cluster-
size conversion, but you'll find that Disk Defragmenter also runs
very slowly when your cluster sizes are 512-bytes.

The time factor thing is variable. While it took me four hours to
convert the cluster size on a 12GB notebook drive, it took one SFNL
reader only a few minutes and another one over six hours. I asked
the Paragon people about that and they wouldn't commit to even a
range of time you can expect this process to take. Reading between
the lines, this large difference from PC to PC in the time it takes
to run the conversion is normal.

The user interface issue comes into play when you do the cluster
conversion because nothing says "Convert to 4K Cluster Size." But I
can save you that pain. Once you have Paragon Partition Manager
running, select the NTFS drive whose clusters you want to convert.
From the program menu, choose Partition > Modify > Change cluster
size. Dial the "Sectors/Cluster" spinner up to the number 8. Press
OK. (If you select 4 in this scroll box, you'll get 2K clusters --
not the desired outcome.) The conversion process requires that
Windows XP reboot.

Maybe you'll be lucky and have the fast-track conversion. If not, I
can promise you this, it'll be worth the wait. As soon as the
conversion completed for me my performance was back to FAT32 levels.
All that was left to do was run Disk Defrag again, both to check the
cluster size and also to defrag the disk. Do both things.

A couple final notes on NTFS this week. First, I've received a ton
of email about NTFS that I haven't had time to get to. Many offer
interesting info or questions deserving response. I will continue to
cover NTFS in future issues.

The other point is that Microsoft is continuing to investigate
issues people have had with slow NTFS performance on new Windows XP
PCs. The company is working with some of SFNL's readers on that
point. I hope to get some sort of report back from Microsoft -- and
if so, I'll publish it in a future issue. My take though? The steps
in this issue will probably fix your problem, assuming you're
willing to shell out for the Paragon product.


[SFNL] Scot's Newsletter -- 6/24/2002  
Date: 6/24/2002 9:24:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: scot@scotsnewsletter.com

Fixing Sluggish XP Performance --
QUESTION: I am running XP Professional on a Pentium 4 Dell with
Preinstalled XP Pro. My applications include Office XP, IE 6, and MSN
Explorer. My hard drive's file system is NTFS. Performance is sluggish.
What services should I turn off to make the machine more responsive? --
Peter Luchansky

ANSWER: Because you have NTFS, I would first suspect that your
performance issues are related to small NTFS cluster sizes on your hard
drive. When a hard drive that was previously formatted with DOS tools
(Fdisk and Format, creating FAT16 or FAT32 partitions) is converted to
NTFS, there is frequently a problem that causes a tiny 512-byte cluster
size under NTFS. That's the smallest cluster size NTFS allows. I won't
go into a long explanation, but it's also the slowest cluster size. The
solution is to convert the cluster sizes to at least 4K. Many, many
people have reported that doing so solved their performance problems
completely. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but really hasn't done
much about it. It's also not warning people not to convert to NTFS on
Windows 9x upgrades, which routinely result in 512-byte cluster sizes.
This isn't just a Windows XP problem, either. Windows 2000 users face
the same issue.

It's also not just a problem for people who've upgraded to Windows XP
and then converted to NTFS either. Even some new PCs -- including name
brand models (especially in the early going right after Windows XP
shipped) -- had this problem. The DOS-based software tools some PC
makers use to image new hard drives are the culprit. If your new PC was
purchased recently from a local system integrator, for example, you
could have this problem. Most major PC makers have resolved this
problem (on PCs sold in 2002), though.

So far I have been unable to come up with a reliable solution that
doesn't require the use of a third-party disk-partitioning utility. So
the one I recommend is Paragon Partition Manager. This product was
developed by Russian programmers for the European market. You can buy
it on the Internet for about $40. What makes it different from most
other disk-partitioning utilities is that it can dynamically convert
cluster sizes under NTFS.

The following article in Scot's Newsletter describes where to get
Paragon and tells you how to use it to solve the 512-byte problem:

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/21.htm#filesys

Before you rush off and buy Paragon, though, use the instructions on
this page to find out whether you have the 512-byte cluster size:

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/20.htm#filesys

If your cluster size isn't less than 4K, then this isn't your problem.

If you already own PowerQuest's PartitionManager, you should read these
instructions.

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/23.htm#filesys 

While they don't work for everyone, they could save you the cost of the
Paragon product.

Finally, there are other disk partitioning utilities -- some of them
available for free -- that may also do the job. I have not tested those
products. But I wanted to let you know they existed if you want to do
your own research. I have personally solved the cluster-size problem
with both the Paragon and PowerQuest products. --S.F.

Hi CrazyOne:

This computer that I want to dual boot is my #2 computer that I use when I visit my son out of state.  It is used only for email, yahoo chat and amateur radio communications via the serial port and my transceiver.  I will load several small programs on it but have no intention of "loading" it.

As I understand from reading what you sent plus more from Microsoft, I should partion my HDD, load 98se on the C:\ partition and XP on the D:\ partition.  Am I right so far?

Perhaps I can get away with the 750MB for my 98se and C:\ drive.  

I have no intention of loading the XP either.  The primary purpose is to just learn XP and familiar myself with it.

Now, after I load 98se on my C:\ 750MB partition, I then switch to my formatted D:\ drive and load XP using D:\setup.exe ??

If this is correct so far, then when I boot the computer, will I be given a choice of what I want to boot to...98se or XP ??  I would like that option.  How is this done?

When I tried to load XP Pro it asked me what I wanted to format with...NTFS and several other choices.  Which one should I use?

The system I am using is a new Soyo mobo with a 450MHz AMD CPU, 128MB SDRAM, SVGA monitor and the very old 3.6GB IBM HDD.  I CANNOT afford to buy another HDD at this time.  I just blew away my "allowance" on a new FB scanner and CD burner.  :-)

I can use all the help I can get ladies and gentlemen.  I thank you one and all for what you have given me so far.

Karl

>>>As I understand from reading what you sent plus more from Microsoft, I should partion my HDD, load 98se on the C:\ partition and XP on the D:\ partition.  Am I right so far?

Yes

>>>Now, after I load 98se on my C:\ 750MB partition, I then switch to my formatted D:\ drive and load XP using D:\setup.exe ??

No you can either run the XP installation form within Win98 and then make sure you tell it to load on the D partition. Or if you can boot to the XP CD you can run the installation there. Or use the Win98 boot disk and type in

x:\i386\winnt.exe

x denotes whatever the letter is of your CD Drive.

>>>If this is correct so far, then when I boot the computer, will I be given a choice of what I want to boot to...98se or XP?  I would like that option.  How is this done?

If you load Win98 fist then XP the XP installation will see the Win98 installation and will rebuild the boot sector on that disk and then build boot files so as to be able to load Win98 or XP from a boot menu. Win2000 and XP have built in technology that can recognize other OS's and then build multi boot scenarios.

>>>When I tried to load XP Pro it asked me what I wanted to format with...NTFS and several other choices.  Which one should I use?

Presuming you have loaded Win98 and XP is asking to format the D partition with NTFS and you say yes then this will save some disk space because NTFS uses less space then FAT32. However keep in mind when you boot into Win98 it wont see the D drive because Win98 doesn't know how to read NTFS partitions. If you don't care if the Win98 can see the partition then I would suggest NTFS mainly to reduce the amount of disk space used.

CrazyOne-

Many thanks for the info. I made a hard copy of it to put in my files (I am now 66 years old and suffering from CRS)

As I recall from my first fiasco loading XP, about 10 minutes into the load I get a window saying something to the effect, "cannot find file i386 needed (or something to the effect) to continue loading Windows XP."  This whole episode has become a blur now....

Everything is clear except the "if you don't care if Win98 can see the partition" bit is greek to me.  Is there a problem if 98 can't see the D: partition?  

As far as saving space is concerned, how much space are we talking about?  

As I mentioned, I have no intention of LOADING the C: or D: drives.  

Karl

CrazyOne:

Four of us had a session loading XP tonight.  Finally got it in at 2245H !

Thanks for your help.  I received quite an education do this.

A bit of info for you and the rest.  XP Pro takes 1.26GB of space on a HDD!  Dayumn!!

Karl

Yeah it is big isn't it. LOL