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I've currently got two drives (XP and 98) in a pokey old P2 300 that I use for web testing. A friend gave me a much faster machine and I thought I'd just pop the drives out of my current box and into the new one.

They're not especially configured - I'm a Mac guy and my PC doesn't really have anything installed on it - but it'd be slightly less of a pain to move the drives than to get the previous XP installation where I want it, and then I still have to get my 98 drive in there (which is an actor in some unresolved dual-boot problems right now but I figured get it all in the faster box before I take it in to the shop = faster troubleshooting = cheaper).

Am I headed for trouble, or is it pretty straightforward and will things generally "work"?

- Bob

Hi there bob, the best thing you can do is to do a completely fresh install of winxp. Since the hardware configuration has changed there's a chance you'll end up with the famous blue screens of death.
Even when, after placing the drives, everything works as it should, there's an increased risk of errors. So my advice is to reinstall winxp completely.
good luck, Bram

Hey there Bob,

Quick question, do you definately want to keep both your XP and your 98?

If you do you can actually install both operating system onto 1 hard drive, such that when you boot the computer it will give you the choice of either booting into Win98 or WinXP.

Then you could use your second (spare) hard drive to keep all your files which you store for web design.

Just a thought.:tongue:

I do need to keep 98 - I test under XP/IE6 and 98/IE5 (and others), so having the two OSs seems sensible to me. I'd be happy to have both on one drive.

I'm assuming now that I'll start with the freshly XP'd drive my friend left in the computer, and then obtain (buy somewhere) a copy of 98 (since I don't own one - my existing 98 install came with the old computer), and then tack it onto that drive somehow...?

I recall reading it's better to have the 98 install first, then add the XP - or was that the other way around...?

Obviously I'm new to the PC


- Bob

What you have to remember when installing a dual-boot system on one hard drive:

• You need to install the `earlier` operating system first.

So in your case you already have Win98 installed on one drive. So you could install WinXP onto the same drive, just remember to change its installation directory and in theory that will kill two birds with one stone.


For more information on dual-booting take a look at this site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...e/meandxp.mspx

OK - since I want to use the new PC and (it appears) shouldn't move drives over without reformatting/erasing/whatever, I'll need to pick up a copy of 98, erase & install 98 on the new PC's drive, then install XP (which I already own).

I couldn't do it on the "old" PC anyway, since the 98 drive is pretty small in capacity. I'm sure I couldn't even fit XP on it.

- Bob

Yup, you're right there. Keeping win98 and winxp on seperate drives may be a good idea. Though I recommend isntalling winxp and not installing win98. This way you can use NTFS on your drives which is much better compared to fat32