Win98 and XP on same drive

[Ifish25]

I am almost over my mad about MS tagging info of hard drive when installing and registering XP. Now, I would like to know the procedure for installing 98 and XP on same drive. We have some expensive programs that will not work on XP. Do I need to create two logical FAT32 drives? I would like to allocate 15meg to 98 and 25meg to XP. What are some precautions I need to take?

[BipolarBill]

I would like to allocate 15meg to 98 and 25meg to XP

I hope you mean GB here!

I would create three partitions.

One 50MB "boot" partition
One 15GB FAT32 partition
One 25GB NTFS partition

Install Win98 first to the D: drive.
Install XP, choosing new installation to the E: drive.

Now if you must format either system drive, your bootloader will be intact afterward.

[Ifish25]

Originally posted by BipolarBill
I hope you mean GB here!

I would create three partitions.

One 50MB "boot" partition
One 15GB FAT32 partition
One 25GB NTFS partition

Install Win98 first to the D: drive.
Install XP, choosing new installation to the E: drive.

Now if you must format either system drive, your bootloader will be intact afterward.

OOPS! Yup, GB. I did not wait for answer and went ahead with the two partitions. Actually, it appears that 98 automatically set aside a 2 gig "virtual drive" partition for boot data. The total space available is only 38g for a 40+ g drive. I tried to find out what had happened, but all I can find is an inaccessible 2g portion of drive that matched the dialog when bootup disk was reading the drive. I removed the only partitions that I could find, set a 37% partition, and then simply selected the remaining total byte count for the other partition to be sure it was all used. I was unaware of such a "virtual drive" allocation procedure though. When I loaded 98, I used fdisk to make "C:" the active partition and it went without a hitch. Then I used fdisk to set "D:" as active partition and loaded XP. I also made both FAT32 because I really was in new territory here and it does prove convenient. It also makes the better XP defrag available to defrag both partitions. Another reason for using FAT32 exclusively was to make compatible created data files loadable from both OS's. My son has some hairy and expensive computation programs in Civil Engineering that are not compatible with XP. I am trying to make it possible to store all files on the same ZIP disks. You may prove to be right though on the need for the specific drive for boot up data.

[BipolarBill]

Hmmmm....I have no idea how you ended up with a 2GB drive for strictly booting unless you have a Compaq or such that already was partitioed that way. No matter...it's the results that counts.

The reason that I recommended NTFS for WinXP is to keep it hidden from Win98. Systen utilities like Norton Windoctor will sometimes assme that the other OS is an extension of Win98 and mess up one or both registries when "fixing" it. Messy.

As far as transferring files to Zip, it doesn't matter which file system you're using. The data is taken off as bit and bytes in both cases. I used to wonder about that when I was sharing drives. Even in that case, the network OS is unaware of the file system and only sees the data as offered up by the operating system. You could say that the OS translates the data for the connecting OS.

[Ifish25]

Originally posted by BipolarBill
Hmmmm....I have no idea how you ended up with a 2GB drive for strictly booting unless you have a Compaq or such that already was partitioed that way. No matter...it's the results that counts.

The reason that I recommended NTFS for WinXP is to keep it hidden from Win98. Systen utilities like Norton Windoctor will sometimes assume that the other OS is an extension of Win98 and mess up one or both registries when "fixing" it. Messy.

As far as transferring files to Zip, it doesn't matter which file system you're using. The data is taken off as bit and bytes in both cases. I used to wonder about that when I was sharing drives. Even in that case, the network OS is unaware of the file system and only sees the data as offered up by the operating system. You could say that the OS translates the data for the connecting OS.

There is a possibility that a FAT16 partition was created while I was experimenting with fdisk, but it never appeared in the options list. I try to stay away from hard drive "medics." I just have never had that much success in repairing disasters. One other value to keeping both in FAT32 is that upgrades can be downloaded from either system. I put a shortcut from each desktop to the download directory on the other OS for file transfer option. I probably would have gone with NTFS were it not for the need to keep those expensive 98 program hard drive data files accessible to XP; or would XP have recognized them anyway; since it is FAT32 compatible? That would destroy the whole argument.

[BipolarBill]

Argument destroyed. As a matter of fact, you can simply boot to WinXP and copy files from an NTFS partition to a FAT32 partition to make those files accessible to Win98.

XP can access FAT, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. The same is true for Win2K.

[Ifish25]

Well, as Gomer Pyle would say, Gawwwly! I don't suppose there is any way to convert Xp "on-the-fly," is there, without reinstalling?

Incidently, one would think you were from Amarillo, the way your Texas flag is always blowing in a gale.

[BipolarBill]

...and you know the odor that the wind carries in Amarillo? The old saying goes that, to find Texas, one goes East/West 'til one smells it and South 'til one steps in it. That saying refers to Amarillo!

No...I'm outside of Houston.

Yes you can convert on the fly - to NTFS. From a command prompt, type

CONVERT X: /FS:NTFS

Where X marks the drive. Don't ever do this to a Win98 drive! It's one-way, so choose wisely!

[Ifish25]

I would create three partitions.

One 50MB "boot" partition
One 15GB FAT32 partition
One 25GB NTFS partition

Install Win98 first to the D: drive.
Install XP, choosing new installation to the E: drive.

Now if you must format either system drive, your bootloader will be intact afterward.


I think I just stepped in one of Amarillo's "locators."

I liked the idea of setting another partition for Boot data, so I reformatted and created three virtual drives. Unfortunately, I put the boot partition on the end of the XP "D:" partition. 98 installed OK in the first "C" partition, but XP will not install because it does not recognize the "E" partition and wants to include it as part of "D" drive. I tried running fdisk to clean up the mess but get a "Fixed Disk Error" message and then bomb out before the program even loads. Am I going to have to format "C" to clean it up? I already formatted "D" again. When I had 98 as a primary and XP in the extended partition by itself, everything went smoothly. How do I get my foot out of this one?

[BipolarBill]

Zap the drive:

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm#

Start fresh. You know the layout.

[Ifish25]

OK BipolarBill. I really owe you a big one. ZAP did it. Now if I can just remember not to install the less-than-specific programs into the wrong directory.