[averysadman]

So i have a pile of old games from the 90s that don't run on my Vista laptop, so i looked around a bit and found out about double partitioning. I like the idea of being able to choose from 98 and Vista, and it would be nice to play all of those old games again, and just generally mess around with 98.
So i downloaded a .ISO of the win98 installation disk that i can mount with Daemon Tools, and i can retrieve the serial key from my old win98 desktop, so i'll have an official version of the OS. My problem is that i have no idea how to go about doing this, or what it entails.
My options are as follows:

1-Install win98 along with Vista on my laptop's hard drive.
2-Install win98 on my external HDD (1Tb).
3-Install win98 on a USB key (8Gb).

I think the USB key would be preferable, seen as i wouldn't have to format anything large.
Another problem is that i don't know if my laptop would support Win98, as it is quite modern.
The specs are as follows:

-OS: Windows Vista 32bit, service pack 1.
-Processor: Pentium DualCore CPU T4200 @ 2.00GHz 2.00GHz
-RAM: 3Gb
-Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3430

My third problem is that i don't know exactly how double partitioning works. Is there any risk of me losing data or otherwise damaging something? What kinds of problems might i encounter?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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None of the available options are feasible.
To dual-boot Windows 98, Win98 needs to be installed first, then Vista. You cannot install any version of Windows to a USB stick or external drive and you can't add Win98 to an existing installation as it will insist on being the only operating system on the machine.

The other issues are, Win98 will get incredibly upset at all this nice new hardware that it will be totally unable to do anything with. You'll have no drivers for one thing, it baulks at more than 512Mb of memory, does not support hard drives bigger than 137Gb and a dual-core processor will work, but Windows 98 will only use one core. Then of course, don't expect to be able to read anything in your Vista from in Windows 98.

[Neil Jones]

None of the available options are feasible.
To dual-boot Windows 98, Win98 needs to be installed first, then Vista. You cannot install any version of Windows to a USB stick or external drive and you can't add Win98 to an existing installation as it will insist on being the only operating system on the machine.

The other issues are, Win98 will get incredibly upset at all this nice new hardware that it will be totally unable to do anything with. You'll have no drivers for one thing, it baulks at more than 512Mb of memory, does not support hard drives bigger than 137Gb and a dual-core processor will work, but Windows 98 will only use one core. Then of course, don't expect to be able to read anything in your Vista from in Windows 98.

[averysadman]

Ah, thats a shame, although i can't say i wasn't expecting there to be problems.
I wasn't aware that windows couldn't be installed on external drives and keys, a friend of mine boots Ubuntu from a key, so i assumed it was viable for other OSs.
Although it's somewhat off topic, do you know any way i could get these win98 games to work on my Vista? I have tried both DOSbox emulation and compatability mode, neither of which yielded any results.
Thanks for the help.

[Neil Jones]

Unfortunately not all software works under Vista, and the older the software is, the less chance there is that it'll work. This is sometimes the way the cookie crumbles. If they don't work under Vista and Vista Compatibility mode, there's a not a lot that can be done about it, unfortunately.