Can WinXP and Win98 exist on seperate drives in the same machine?

[sherrie59]

I want to take the HD from my old machine (Win98) and put it into my new machine (WinXP Home). There's too much valuable software on the old drive that only runs under 98 that I don't want to lose/upgrade.

Is it as simple as me making all the proper connections in the new machine? What steps do I need to take software/BIOS-wise to make my new machine work with both drives/OS's?

TIA
Sherrie

 

[wolluf]

You can install it as a slave drive on the same IDE cable as XP drive is connected to (make sure you set the jumpers on the drive correctly - there should be details of how to do this printed on the drive. Also check the XP drive's jumper settings. Some drives have different setting when they are master on their own and when there is a slave present).

To set up a dual boot I would recommend the boot manager here (

http://www.boot-us.com)

- free for personal use. Once both drives are installed, system should boot normally into XP. Install boot-us GUI, then run it to set up the boot menu (you can save the menu to a floppy drive to test, to make sure its ok (doesn't update your hard drive then & works exactly the same) - then save it to a partition or the MBR when you're happy. Once installed, it should boot XP and 98 from the menu it provides.

 

[undotcom]

Similar but differnet scenario to consider...

I have a slave drive from an old Win98 machine, that I wish to install as a slave drive into an XP machine.

Will XP be able to read and convert this drive, along with the data to the XP format?

I am trying to avoid an intermediate step of a network file backup.

 

[Comtech]

XP can read/write to either FAT32 (win98) or NTFS filesystems.
Install the drive as slave, and providing you have the jumpers correct, the hard drive is recognized in BIOS, then XP will see it with no troubles. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[wolluf]

and there's no overlay software installed on old disk.

 

[Comtech]

OOOH, Yuk! Don't even think it ;-) Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/