what's the best way to go about installing Win 98Se on a second drive which is formatted in FAT32. I assume you will get a dual boot option.
When I booted off the Cd for Win 98 it wanted to delete XP so I quit from the set up. The reason I want to do this is so we can use some old games like Gabriel Knight that I cant seem to get to install and work in XP.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Without a boot manager such as Acronis OS Selector or VCom System Commander, you cannot install Windows 98 on a machine running XP. Older OS has to be installed before XP.

i_XpUser

When creating a dual boot system you need to install the OSes in the order they were released. So you need to install 98 first, then XP in order to do it properly. There *may* be hacks to get around this, but none that I know of. Also, I beleive 98 must be on the C partition.

One workaround would be to change the drive boot order and make the 2nd disc the boot drive. Then install 98 to it. You would need to change the boot order to select your OS instead of a boot menu.

Michael J

Lower left side will tell you how.

http://www.dougknox.com/

http://computervitals.com/

Direct link

Installing Win98 after WinXP

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!!!

And all the naysayers said it can't be done. LOL!!;>)

http://computervitals.com/

I was just going to say, of course you can install out of order. You just have to understand what each OS does as it installs.

There is even a method on the web of creating a bootsect.dos file that will allow you to boot 98 from a ntfs c:

Give a person a fish you feed them for a day.
Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

THIS is the Number 1 "naysayer" that works very well & trouble-free for all non power-users.

i_XpUser

mmm echoing assorted comments above...

It can be done.... '98 in after XP etc..

In your situation - perhaps initially check whether or not the '9x compatablity options within XP will suffice for said games? It may allow all you require?

Perhaps a read of:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspx

may help with that approach?

Otherwise either you use an add-in boot-util - as already mooted by others above,

or:

First (with XP set as Master) copy the XP boot.ini (and maybe the ntldr/ntdetect.com) to a floppy, lock and keep handy... Next set the '98 drive as Master, slave the XP drive to it, install '98 to the fat32 formatted "Master"; then copy the contents of the floppy you made earlier to the c: root of the '98 Master. Then open the copy of the boot.ini (now on '98 c: root) - via notepad/wordpad - and edit the entries there for XP that show rdisk(0) so as to read rdisk(1); save changes and exit. Then start an install of XP (CD or 6 floppies + CD boot - not from within '98) to the '98 drive (as c:\temp\win-xp) - cancel it at first reboot; remove all disks and you get the XP boot-menu - listing '98, XP on its (slaved) drive, and an incomplete installation to the '98 drive.

Boot to either '98 or XP (on slaved drive); locate/delete (on the '98 drive) the c:\tem\win-xp folder; also any other folders/files that start with the $ symbol. Delete any entries in the boot.ini (on the '98 drive/c: root) that refer to the incomplete installation.

(When you boot to XP (via the dual-boot menu intially) perhaps useful to set XP as default OS to boot?)

Verify you still boot OK to XP on the slaved drive; presuming so - empty recyle-bin on '98 drive, defrag the drive to tidy up the scene...

Job done.

Both OS will boot as c:\ etc...; XP path statements will be retained correctly etc. (This is because during boot-up XP refers to the registry for all drive-letter assignments etc; thus path statements are preserved even though drive is no longer Master). XP will assign a letter other than " c " to the '98 drive when it views/accesses it; but this should present no issues. '98 will not see XP drive if it's ntfs.

All shared data must be fat32 (or fat16 - 2Gig max partition).

By installing XP to the '98 drive (as above) you allow XP to create automatically teh boosect.dos - as opposed to manually creating it (as per Doug Knox - which is a viable option...). Unlike in NT/W2K the repair routine in XP does not create a bootsect.dos when it finds a dos based OS presence in the c: root of the Master drive...