1) i have a hp nc6120 laptop with a win xp o/s the system has a cd/dvd drive but no floppy drive 2) i wanted to add windows 98 to my c drive along with win xp. so i obtained partition magic and set up a seperate partition for win 98 and prepared it for installation.3) i installed windows 98 but some problems occured 4) When 98 is done copying files to the hard drive the computer needs to restart. This works fine. However, after it restarts and does some hardware detecting it needs to shut down again. On this shutdown the system hangs at th "Windows is shutting down" screen. 5. After manually powering off and on, scandisk runs and then installation continues and i get a message it says that "the file dhcpcsvc.dll on windows 98 second edition cd-rom cannot be found." below that is says that setup could not find the file in the specified path "c:\\windows\system\precopy". when i try to specify the cd drive as the place to look for the file i cannot because all that is available inthe pull down menu is "c:\\windows\system\precopy" and a:\. 6. To get past this I have to click "skip file." Then another file cannot be found and so I have to skip that file. Ultimately I end up skipping many .dll .exe etc... files. After Im finished skipping a million files the computer restarts. 6. Upon reboot i get a screen that says "cannot find a device file that may be needed to run windows or a windows application","the windows registry or system.ini file refers to this device file, but the device file no longer exists" itit also says the vnetbios.vxd is missing or has been deleted and to press any key to continue Then i get the windows 98 password login screen. 7. Windows starts up and seems to be functional. The problem I have, however, is when i got into My Computer there is no d drive there. i check the device manager and no signs of the d drive so i cant use the cd-rom because of this i cant use the cd-rom drive and dont know what i need to do to get all these .dll files(drivers) installed as well as the d drive i even tried to delete the win xp partition and win xp to do a clean install of win 98 with the same results. i believe win 98 is not compatible with the laptop drivers but i dont know how to resolve this. someone suggested i buy a external hd and install win98 on that but i dont know if id have the same results. please anyone help

For a dual boot configuration with 98 and XP, you need to start with the 98 install. THEN install XP. Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!

i did install win 98 first with part magic even deleted win xp completely tried to install win 98 alone same results

Not to harp on a old record by you can install out of order. You just have to do a XP repair by going in and running fixmbr and fixboot. There is one major condition for installing 98 and that is the first partition has to be fat or fat32. If XP was on NTFS you can not install 98 without going thru a bunch of hoops. It is one of a couple of reasons I came up with the How to use PQboot found in the how tos section here. With no floppy drive how did you install 98? If from within XP I would be surprised you didn't get stopped with XP telling you that you can't install a older OS. Might test the cd copy by going into xp and coping the cd disk to a Cabs folder on the d: drive. See if it completes successfully. If it doesn't this could indicate a problem with the cd/cd drive/cable/memory/ide contrller Golly gee wilerkers everyone. Learn to Internet Search

From My experience in this matter the best option is to install win98 on a separate HD from the XP installation. Always install the oldest OS first. Direct XP to install on the secondary HD. Windows XP will do a great job of setting up multi-boot all by itself. If using both OSes it might be best to leave the XP partition formatted in FAT32 as win 98 cannot read NTFS drives. This way you can exchange files from one drive to the other with little hastle. best of luck Frank :

i set up two seperate partitions with win 98 being the first as a fat32. win xp followed in a seperate partition as ntfs i set up win 98 with a win 98 install cd..my understanding is that when win 98 is set up as fat 32 it cant read win xp when its set up as ntfs.. but when i deleted win xp partition and o/s why did i have the same results

"However, after it restarts and does some hardware detecting it needs to shut down again. On this shutdown the system hangs at th "Windows is shutting down" screen. 5. After manually powering off and on," The first issue here is it is not shutting down properly. Then when you power it down, it messes with the install. You need to find out why it is not restarting on it's own. 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.