Member Avatar for socca_playa

Hi guys, I recently created another partition and am planning install windows 98 so I can play some older games. But before I install the OS, I was wondering how I will be able to access and alternate between the OS that first partition has (XP) and the second one (98). Thanks in advance. If someone has a link to a tutorial, that would be much appreciated.

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Dani AI

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A few practical notes that build on the replies from , and .

Before you touch the installer: image the whole disk (so you can roll back instantly), and make sure the partition you plan to use for Win98 is formatted FAT32 (Win98 will not install to NTFS). Check BIOS/IDE mode — many modern SATA/AHCI controllers aren’t visible to Win98, so switch to IDE/compatibility mode if your motherboard offers it. Collect Win98-era drivers (video/sound/network) ahead of time. Copy the XP boot files from C:\ (for example ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini) to removable media so you can restore them if needed.

If the Win98 setup overwrites XP’s boot, the usual recovery path is to boot the XP CD to the Recovery Console, restore the NT bootloader and copy the XP boot files back, then rebuild the boot menu. Typical Recovery Console steps are:

fixmbr
fixboot c:
copy D:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy D:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
bootcfg /rebuild

(adjust the CD drive letter if it’s not D:). After that, add a menu entry that chainloads the Win98 boot sector (many multiboot guides explain how to save the 98 boot sector as a file and add it to boot.ini).

If you want to avoid partition surgery and driver headaches, run Win98 in a virtual machine (VirtualBox/VMware/Virtual PC) or use DOSBox for very old titles. That keeps XP intact and sidesteps modern hardware/driver compatibility and bootloader risks. Finally: keep the Win98 installation offline and backed up — it’s unsupported and insecure by modern standards.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

also .its recommended that you install oldest version first ,as not to replace newer file with older versions ., so its proper to install win98 then winxp in that order .

Member Avatar for Bear003

The link already given is really great if you are set on dual booting, but if you are doing this just to run some older Win98se games you might just try installing them under XP and running them in compatibility mode. Just a thought.

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