Doubleboot: Protect Windows 98 while running XP

[cannie]

When I first installed XP on doubleboot many of the old .lnk and .pif links were deactivated by the install program, being redirected to unexisting programs in the Documents and Settings folder, and I had to rebuild them.

When installing XP apps it happened to me frequently that several .dll or .sys files dissapeared from the old Windows\System folder, even when none of them affected to the apparent normality of Windows 98, which only was apparent because afterwards I had problems when running specific old programs.

No viruses at all in any of the cases, but the results of the installer program.

I think it is good to post it here so that any newcomer to doubleboot takes good care of saving .rar or .zip backup files of everything on CD before installing XP or new XP apps, in special the ones using Java.

HTH

[FishBowl]

Bad idea, to use the same partition for both systems.

Instead either add a second hard disk for XP or make available a second partition for it. Shrinking the C: drive is possible with several tools. But if you already have a D: (or even e:) partition, remove every '98 related stuff from there and then use that for XP.

If being installed to D: or higher, XP won't interfere with C: except of installing it's boot files and boot manager there to.

Would even add '98 to it's own boot manager as second option automatically.

And you can edit the boot manager even from '98, via "boot.ini".

[cannie]

Bad idea, to use the same partition for both systems.

You are right.

I forgot to say that after my first experience I have different partitions for each OS, using doubleboot.

Even so, I have needed in some occasions (not so frequently as before) the .rar file to rebuild Windows 98 because of an abnormal behavior of the old OS, not existing any apparent motive for it.

BTW: having a simple copy of the XP windows\system32\config files (you need: default, sam, security, software, system and userdiff, only the ones without any extension) into a folder at a different drive allows you to repair XP registry in seconds using Windows 98. You only have to delete all the windows\system32\config existing files and copy in their place the saved ones.

HTH

Edited January 6, 2009 by cannie