Dual-Booting Windows 98/Me with Windows XP

A good choice for those who wish to add Windows XP to an older system is dual-booting. Windows XP is incompatible with a variety of older programs and hardware. By using a dual-boot system, the functionality of these legacy applications and equipment can be preserved until the time comes for a new computer or a complete system overhaul. Dual-booting with XP is basically very straightforward but there are a few points that are worth pointing out and I will mention them here.

It is not a good idea to install XP on the same partition with another operating system. A second empty partition should be created first. Although partitioning can be done from the XP disk using the modern version of Fdisk, everything on existing partitions will be destroyed. Unless you are going to completely reinstall your older operating system you will need something like Partition Magic. If using Partition Magic, create a data partition and do not use the option “this partition will contain an operating system” unless you plan to use a boot manager other than the one that comes with XP and you want to hide the two operating systems from each other. Hiding one operating system from the other was necessary when dual-booting Windows 95 with 98 or dual-booting Windows 98 with Me. It is not necessary with XP and my personal preference is to be able to see the entire system from each operating system. Windows XP can also be hidden from the Windows 98 system by formatting the XP partition with NTFS. Windows 98/Me must have a FAT partition. More advanced users may prefer this setup. Any FAT32 partition will be visible to Windows XP but Windows 98/Me cannot read NTFS volumes. (For more on the different types of file systems, see this article.)

The older operating system must be already installed before starting the XP installation. Installation is very easy with only one thing that has to be carefully watched. Do NOT use the default choice of an upgrade installation. Ignore the message that this is “recommended”. That choice will over-write the older existing Windows operating system. Choose “New installation, advanced.” (See figure below) The installation will then go in automatically onto the empty partition. If you have more than two partitions, there is an Advanced setting that will allow you to pick which partition you want XP to be on. More details are at this Microsoft article.

After XP is installed, a boot menu will appear whenever the computer is first turned on. By default Windows XP will be at the top and will be the operating system that boots unless Windows 98/Me (called Windows on the menu) is highlighted by using the down arrow key. The default setting has a 30 second delay period in which to make a choice. Both the order of operating systems in the boot menu and the delay time are controlled in a hidden file boot.ini that is located in the root of the C: drive. It is a text file and can be edited with a text editor (after removing the attributes) but it is a better idea to do any editing from Windows XP. One way to adjust settings is to go to Control Panel-System-Advanced-Startup and Recovery- Default Operating System (See figure below.) The details are given here

One final point is that the early stages of booting XP actually involve the C: drive even when most of the operating system is on another partition. XP installs three files in the root of the C: partition. These files are hidden, read-only, system files and include the aforementioned boot.ini, and two others, ntldr, and ntdetect.com. Dual-boot systems also have a file bootsect.dos. If these get corrupted, the system will not boot so I suggest making a backup diskette with copies.

Removing Dual-Boot Entries from Boot Display Menu

After using a dual-boot system for a period of time, many PC users then want to remove the older operating system and use only Windows XP. One annoyance is that after removing the older system, you still get a boot display menu listing both operating systems. Removing the boot display menu involves editing the boot.ini file and is described here.