Dual Boot?

[TB99 0]

Hey, I've been running XP for quite some time and love it dearly ... I just want to install ME to run some tests on both systems real quick ... How can I install it? I've tried creating another partition on the end of my C drive and the beginning of my D drive, but neither work ... It wants to "reconfigure" my NTFS drives before moving on ... do I need to put the partition on the ROOT of C drive for it to install?? If so, does this affect any performance of XP?? Anything else I can do? Thanks!

 

~TB

[CUViper 0]

WinME has to put files on the c: drive in order to be able to boot, so that partition must be FAT16/32

[TB99 0]

I had a FAT32 partition on the end of my C drive tho? Also ... if I end up making a FAT32 partition on the root of C, will this mess up XP or anything else? Performance or anything? Thanks ...

[Preacher 0]

Althou we´re running OSes like Win2k, XP, ME, their installation still has limitations from the old DOS era.

 

You can create only 3 primary partitions. All these partitions MUST start in the first 6 gigs (3 times 2 GByte (Fat16)) of a harddrive, otherwise your machine cannot boot from the OS that might be installed.

 

From what you´ve written I assume that your WinXP installation is your first primary partition. Limit it´s size down to 5 gigs (using Partition Magic Pro 7.0 which imho is the best anyway) and create a new primary partition with a size of 2 gigs. Set this newly created partition to "active", place your Win98 CD in the drive and reboot. Install Win98. Once done, install Partition Magic on Win98. You´ll use this later to swap back to WinXP again (mark the WinXP partition and set it to "active, then reboot). DO NOT under any circumstances use "fdisk" to activate partitions, because it has a nasty bug in it and thus cannot fully activate a partition. You´d have to reinstall your OSes again.

 

Moving WinXP so you can create a primary partition in front of the WinXP partition is also a bad idea, because WinXP remembers the partition it was installed to. If it was installed on partition 1 and now is on partition 2, it cannot locate it´s files. You could correct this manually, but that would be too long to post here.