Duel Booting 98, Linux, and XP on 2 80gb hard drives with too much ram

[Kamex]

Hey. :) I've been wanting to play some of my old games for a long time, but haven't been able to because they aren't compatible with XP. Currently, I have Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 and SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, each on their own 80gig hard drive. The Windows drive is the master, and Linux is the slave.

What I would like to do is format everything, then install 98, XP, and Linux, all on the same computer. I understand that it is very easy to mess this up and cause XP and 98 to fight with eachother, so I'm wondering what the best course of action to take is (What should I install first, what second, which hard drives they should all be on, weither to even bother trying, etc)

I have another problem that needs to be taken care of first, however. It seems that I have too much RAM (1gb rd) for 98 to handle. I know how to fix the problem once I have installed it (I've been told I need to edit a system file), but I don't know what to do to get the thing installed. I need help with this also, otherwise I can't get 98 period.

Can anyone help me with my problems?

[DMR]

Installation order:

Win 98
Win XP
SuSE 9.1

If you do it in that order, XP and 98 should have no conflicts, and when you install SuSE you'll be able to configure it to boot all 3 operating systems.

In terms of placement of the OSes on your drives, I'll give you an example of one of my multi-boot systems:

1. Primary Master drive (C:): 5G, Win 98, Formatted as one single FAT32 Primary partition.

2. Secondary Master drive: 40G, Mandrake 8.0 and Red Hat 7.3, Formatted as 3 Primary ext3 partitions and 7 Logical ext3 partitions (Mandrake and RH /boot and root filesytems are installed on Logical partitions).

3. Primary Master on Promise controller card: 40G, Win 2K, Win XP, and Red Hat 9.0, Formatted as 1 Primary NTFS (Win 2K; D:), 1 Primary FAT32 partition (for sharing data between Windows and Linux), 9 Logical partitions; Win XP (E:) and RH 9 are on Logicals.

4. Using Grub as the bootloader, installed on the MBR of Primary Master drive.

[Kamex]

Alright, I guess I'll install them in the order you said, having 98 and linux on the first drive, and xp on the second. Thank you! :)

I'd get started soon, but unfortunatly, the max ram problem still haunts me. I have four sticks and WOULD be able to physically remove two of them (thus reducing my ram to 512) for the 98 install, if I only knew which two to remove. I originally only had two in there, but my friend put the second two in (which are from another Dell Dimension 8200 and are IDENTICAL) and now neither of us remember which ones were in there originally. If I take the wrong ones out, I could fry my whole computer.

Is there a way to tell which ones were in there first? Perhaps there's another way to get 98 to install?

[DMR]

OK-

You can pretty much install Linux on any drives/partitions you want- just make sure that when you do your partitioning for the Windows installations that you leave enough free (unpartitioned) space on the drive where you'll be installing Linux. Also do make sure to install the operating systems in the order I gave. When installing multiple versions of Windows it's always recommended that you install the older version(s) first; when you throw Linux into the equation, Linux should always be the last OS installed for minimum hassle.

As far as the RAM goes, it's doubtful that you would actually fry the machine by removing sticks from the wrong slots, but the system might not recognize the real, total amount of installed RAM if it isn't installed in a certain order. memory banks (slots) on the motherboard are usually marked, and RAM is usually installed starting with slot 0 and consecutively filling slots from there. In terms of determining the size of each stick, you can sometimes figure that out from looking at the part # sticker on the stick if there is one. Otherwise, you have to look up the part numbers on the individual chips on the stick to determine the full capacity of the stick itself. If you can find any such numbers, post them and I'll look them up for you.

[Kamex]

Ok, then I think I'd rather install the two Windows versions on the same drive for various reasons. Will they fight if I do this? Because I've heard horror stories of them trying to delete eachother and stuff.

As for the ram, I'll check for numbers tomorrow.

[DMR]

Correctly installed, Win 98 and Win XP will not fight each other, and I've never heard of one trying to "delete" the other. The horror stories you heard were probably from people who didn't plan their installations and partitioning schemes properly in the first place. ;)

[lloyd]

i also want to know how to fix it.
i do not think the duel boot is the problem. but nowaday, the xp home always enbedded in hard drive. and we can not use the auto install with duel boot. it will format every thing in the drive.

[howell2]

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