i just got a new 40GB HD and decided to dual boot the hd. i created 3 partitions, installed win98 on one and winxp on the other. problem is while installing winxp after copying files to the hd, the system reboots (which is normal). BUT the winxp reboot to finish the installation never comes out. it just says cannot find HAL.dll on [windows root]system32. i tried reinstalling it but to avail. anybody have any idea what the problem is. thanks

I just did a multi-bootup on my system (Win 2000 Server, Win 98, Win XP and Linux). It works fine now but I had to go through a number of painful re-installs of OS's. I got that same error message you got when things were not installed right - cannot find "Hal.dll" when I did a first time load of XP. The trick is that you install each OS in each of partition. You install Win 98 FIRST and then you install Win XP after that. On the Microsoft Website they recommend that you install the older OS's first (like Win 98 then Win 2000 and then Win XP) when setting up for multiboot configuration. I have the original copy for The complete XP Installation CD for a new PC (Professional Edition) not the "Upgrade for Windows XP" from an older version of Windows. Does anyone know if the Win XP Upgrade version can be used in a multiboot configuration?

Yes, it can. I have WIN XP Home edition upgrade AND WIN 89 upgrade in a dual boot configuration. It works.

I have XP installed on a 15gig NTFS partition and Win98 installed on a 5gig FAT32 LBA partition. I want to be able to dual boot but for some reason I can only boot XP after the first time I install the boot menu. After that it no longer boots from the menu (win98 boots everytime without any trouble). I have tried a couple of different multi-boot programs but they all do the same thing. Any help would be greatly apreciated.