dual OS on xp help

[Needalittleinfo]

I have a buddy who is wanting to put windows 98se on a xp and have the option to boot to either at startup how does he install and how does he get the option to appear at startup? Help please, he is really ambitious about it.

[computersoft]

All he has to do is install win98, and choose the custom install. There he must say not to scratch any of the harddrives. He must partition the harddrives and then he will be able to put one os in each harddrive. hope this helps

[crossedup]

What does he already have installed, XP?

To do this you really, for the sake of ease, should install 98 first and then install XP.

I'm sure you could install 98 after XP but you would have to manually redo the XP bootloader. Search around on the M$ site, there is a lot of info on there about it. This would be the harder way though.

To do it the right way on a fairly new computer should take you right about an hour, if you have the drivers ready.

[Needalittleinfo]

Well, its a laptop and it is brand new from dell its a xps so its juiced. So each OS would have to go on a seperate partition right? would that work for the dell os of xp on a recovery or would the recovery disk erase the partitions too? He has 98se on a disk. partitons can be made, also xp should make it nfts right?

[crossedup]

restore disc would PROBABLY wipe out the partitions. Dell restore cd's ive seen recently are just OEM versions of XP and then a seperate driver disc, that would make things very convenient.

Technically, according to M$, 98 and XP can coexist in the same partition but it is not a good idea if you can help it.

If you want to browse the XP partition from within 98 you will have to format both as FAT32. There are ways around this but that is the easiest way.

[sechs]

Scratch "not a good idea"; it's a bad idea. One or the other operating system will eventually trip-up the other.

The best thing to do would be to leave the operating system as is. Why does your friend want to make this move?

[Needalittleinfo]

He wants to have both OS so that he can ahve support for most everything. There are still programs out there that don't run on XP, older ones. Can he put the OS on a USB HD and Boot from that, he has the option in the bios to boot from usb?

[sechs]

Generally, speaking no.

His best option would be to partition the drive and reinstall the operating systems.