Hello, I am almost possitive you can put Win95 on a machine with Win3.1 and be able to go into whichever one you want. How do I do this? I have 2 hard drives (the first is 1.5GB, the second is 4GB but is formatted to work with DOS, Win3.1, etc) if this helps.

Well, I've got them both on my Win95 system. Win95 will support 'dual booting'. If you have a previous version of MS-DOS installed, you can choose to start either in it or in Win95. Of course, Win31 has to be in a different folder than Win95. I really don't think that it's possible to run Win31 From Win95.

I operate win 3.1 on hd#1 and win95 on hd#2. In order to operate one or the other,when I start my pc I choose in the setup Primary master #1 on with secondary master #2 on.. thus giving me win 3.1 (dos 6.2) wich is the partition of hd #1.In this manner I have access to hd #2 for file tranfer etc. When I operate win95..I simply put the primary master at off and therefor booting win95 partition,but no access to hd #1. I also have a third hd with no partition that i only use for storage (secondary slave). I have access to that one from either operating choice. There are programs to boot either from the same drive...but I tried some..and I had surprises..!!! If i can help any further..just email..? Chow..!

Claude.. are you saying that you select your OS from the BIOS? That's an interesting way to do it... never would have occurred to me. Does seem unecessarily complex, but hey... whatever works. I find that the 'built-in' dual boot option simpler AND allows you access to all drives/partitions (if they're FAT16, anyways).

You can run Windows 3.1 on the same drive as Windows 95 (Its Windows 98 which you will have problems with) and from WinDOS 7.0 (No need for duel boot by the way) at that! You need to install Windows 3.1 into a differant directory (folder) and call it by a differant name, Last time I did it I called it C:\Win31 (No problems with FAT32 on Windows 95 PC's but some with 95B) To do this on a Windows 98 PC you need a OS patch called 3XSTART.exe (Not needed for 95 or 95B) from http://www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk/win9x.htm which patchs microsofts IO.SYS lockout. You may have problems useing Windows 3.1 or 16bit programs on a FAT32 PC however!

Actually, I remember a program that would let you run Windows 95/98 and Windows 3.1 from the same partition. I don't remember where it was, though. It was a fix for IO.SYS (MS-DOS main file), which searched for a special byte string and replaced it. That error message that you get, "You have started this program with an incorrect MS-DOS version... blah blah" (or something like that), is not from Windows 3.1, it's in the MS-DOS 7.10 system. Try your search on Google to find it.