cannie

Hi, SX001! If you enjoy it, there's no more grateful reason than that. Let the world go round and "Don't worry, be happy" Welcome to the forum!

I agree with you: I doubleboot Windows 98 and XP since long ago and I've had the same experience. I'm sure that most users who have abandoned totally Windows 98 were forced to do it, against their will, by the lack of spare parts and drivers, due to the agressive sales policy followed by the commercial pool formed by Microsoft and the hardware providers. BTW as you may have seen in this week TV news this pool is considered to be a threat to civil liberties by the Free Software Foundation (Boston, MA) in their present campaign "windows7sins" against upgrade to Windows 7.

I'm sorry if the thread has gone out of topic because I mentioned RIAA. Maybe it was a not very fortunate way to explain what I meant. I'll try to seek a better fortune by putting it into different words, leaving aside RIAA, with my excuses to to them and to you. Microsoft is the author of all Windows OS. But you need hardware and drivers to run no matter what Windows version. If the hardware and drivers providers don't supply new hardware and new drivers needed for a new Windows version it will not be sold very long, no matter how great the efforts of Microsoft have been or how good is the product. On the other side, if the hardware and drivers providers withdraw from stores the spare parts and stop the supply of the existing drivers for any unsupported Windows version we users earlier or later are forced to throw away our machines and buy whatever they allow us to buy. And the worst of it all: Microsoft is an american corporation subject to democratic laws, but about 85% of the hardware, drivers and peripherals have their first sales chain link in asian countries where controls are almost unexistent and where only exceptionally you can find somebody who ever paid a license to Microsoft. This way we all, Microsoft and we users, are in the hands of the chains of suppliers of hardware, drivers and peripherals. They have in their hands the life of any new or old OS. If the question were "Why did you stop using Windows 98?", most of the users who left it would answer "Because I could not find spare parts" or/and "Because I bought a new preinstalled computer". The chains of suppliers have common interests, and by going in the same direction they are the ones who always obtain the highest profits, not only from the sale of the low price obtained asian manufactured hardware, but also from the important commercial margins in the sale of the preinstalled OS bought from Microsoft.

If the question had been posed by the hardware and drivers providers it would be "How is it possible that anybody is allowed to keep using Windows 98 after the end of the Microsoft lifecycle? Are you trying to kill our business? It should be forbidden by all means!" If the RIAA ever had the factic power that the hardware and driver providers have today, then the Bible, all Shakespeare works and all Beethoven music, to mention only three authors, would be withdrawn from all stores and not sold any more because "their lifecycle is over and they are no more supported by their authors God, Shakespeare and Beethoven". Well, in the case of the Bible they would consider it has been rewritten by a member church and then you should have to pay to RIAA every time you were heard saying "Our Father who..." The more they push against Windows 98, the happier I feel using it. I get conscious of my freedom. I never loved any kind of dictatorships.

Revised and improved. HTH

Added paragraph F3 .- HOW TO CREATE A DOUBLEBOOT CD SHOWING THE DOUBLEBOOT SCREEN DIRECT FROM THE CD. HTH.

Oh yeahhh! Being PC and WC two very similar words, when I try to enter in the internet I always keep attentive to use the keyboard and not the flush chain instead...

Why the one "or" the other? Why not the one "and" the other?. I have a pen, and Windows 98, and Windows XP, and a car, and a bed, and a WC, and I love them all. Well, I'll confess you all my hidden secret: I try to keep attentive to use each of these things for its own finality...

Since long ago I use both and I can assure you that this way you enjoy all the advantages of each of them two, increased by a rockhard security coming from the possibility of an instant repair of any damage. But most computer users don't have the slightest idea of what they have in their hands, and that's the greatest asset for the computing industry.

- Added paragraph G.- IF EVERYTHING FAILS. I hope to contribute with this to the peace of mind of any common user who finds himself totally lost in the jungle of computing by explaining a free, fast and easy way to rebuild everything from scratch thanks to the same procedures used in this tutorial. - Included in B.3 the way to delete all "Recycled" folders at Windows 98 startup to avoid loosing time while complying with the message that invites you to do it manually. HTH.

- Modified the second line of the name of the tutorial: the pursued objective is to create "Live Clones" of the OS similar to the "Live CD", not only in the finality but also in the way to reach it, adding the advantage that the cloned unit is an exact copy of the original for an alternative use, fast and easily loaded and updated.

Complete revision of everything and light corrections to make it better. HTH

New redaction of paragraph A3.- HOW TO PREPARE WINDOWS 98 TO INSTALL THE DOUBLEBOOT WITH XP, to check out the cloned unit before deleting C:\Windows. HTH

Correction in the paragraph A1.2 of the tutorial: never copy the folder "c:\windows\sysbckup" into the new drive when cloning Windows 98. HTH

Rectified omission in the paragraph B.3 (you don't need to copy any log (*. log), tmp (*. tmp), and bak (*. bak) files of C disk, neither the "System Volume Information" folder nor any of the "Temporary Internet Files", "Temp" and "Cookies" folders from "Documents and Settings"). HTH

OMG! after sending the previous post I've noticed that instead of sending a new post I deleted the existing one in which I answered yours. Please accept my excuses, jaclaz. Thank you very much for your corrections! Best wishes. cannie

Hi jaclaz! I forgot to say in the first post why to use a CD instead of a floppy, so it has been completed with your second suggestion. Once more "four eyes see more than two".

A small addition, if I may: The floppy needs to be formatted under 2K/XP in order to have the "proper" bootsector invoking NTLDR. The text has been modified accordingly. Thank you jaclaz!

Added in the first post the paragraph G). - HOW TO CREATE A BOOT CD TO USE IT INSTEAD OF THE BOOT FLOPPY USING NERO. HTH.

Paragraph B.1 has been completed with recommended size for logical units created using fdisk.exe to avoid future problems, according to my own experience. HTH

I've modified in the first post the paragraph "C) HOW TO SWITCH BETWEEN XP1 AND XP2" after detecting by my own experience that doing this kind of switch without changing the active partition generates some changes in the registry which could eventually mean problems for you. Best wishes. HTH.

Thank you for your comment.

You are welcome.

Maybe this is an explanation, but IMHO there's another one: Upgrade was easy from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (about 2 years), a bit more difficult from this to Windows 98 (about 4 years), and even more difficult to XP (more than 8 years and still not totally achieved). People loves XP, being possible to "downgrade" to it from Vista and "virtualize" it from the future 7, in which a more expeditive way will be used to "convince" retrograd people opposed to the "scientific advance": hardware will be incompatible with an straightforward installation of Windows 98, 2000 or XP. If the opinion of users had any meaning, XP should be delivered "as is" with no obligation of further support by Microsoft. But this is a war and not a dialog.

Of course, that's why I say "For the moment and in the near future". I am talking exclusively of the scarce people who already are Windows 98 users and also have an XP install CD. They are able to run both simultaneously and in this moment this is a privilege. After that "near future" most probably we all will be forced one way or another to buy new and still non existing hardware and software to do the same things: business is business. BTW, the hardware that we all use comes almost exclusively from asian countries where almost nobody pays a license to Microsoft and where the best pirates and virus makers of the world live and work, and IMHO they work a lot. It seems that asian hardware manufacturers use expeditive ways in their economically expanding and very densely populated countries, where democracy means the same as in Cuba or North Corea, to force the sales of new machines. Viruses are the marketing substitute for ads while the OS is still supported. When the lifecycle is over they don't need viruses any more: they simply stop delivering spare parts, no matter if there is any demand for them or not. And not paying for foreign licenses is excellent for their governements accounts. Thanks to the Internet we share the first of these "privileges" all over the world, and the need of spare parts makes us suffer everywhere the second one: you can keep using Windows 98 and in the near future XP without Microsoft support, but not without spare parts to repair your computer, something which earlier or later is always mandatory. In the world of computing we all are subject to totalitarian ways, and where nobody pays a license Microsoft is also a victim.