[JohnH2]

My wife and I have friends who live on a sailing yacht and who are coming to visit us this weekend. They have a problem. The husband purchased a new Toshiba laptop which is loaded with software and Windows XP (home or professional - I do not know). He wants to run his old navigational software which he likes and is familiar with however he now has a compatibility problem. That software wants to run on Windows 98. We want to try to partition his new hard drive and install windows 98 and his old navigational program in the new partition. Can we do this? If so, how? any assistance would be very greatly appreciated!

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No, or not easily.

First, windows xp must be installed on a fat32 file system (way harddrive is formatted), which is uncommon.

If it is fat32 by some strange quirk, it is doable in a semi-stragith forward fashion, as illustrated here:

http://www.petri.co...._windows_xp.htm

That is a big if...

If it is NOT ntfs, the process is decidedly trickier.


Will the program not run in windows compatability mode?

How critical is this program--is he willing to spend some money? If so, a virtual pc program might be the answer. How long does he need the program? Vmware 5 can be used as trialware for 30 days, I think

[gerryf]

No, or not easily.

First, windows xp must be installed on a fat32 file system (way harddrive is formatted), which is uncommon.

If it is fat32 by some strange quirk, it is doable in a semi-stragith forward fashion, as illustrated here:

http://www.petri.co...._windows_xp.htm

That is a big if...

If it is NOT ntfs, the process is decidedly trickier.


Will the program not run in windows compatability mode?

How critical is this program--is he willing to spend some money? If so, a virtual pc program might be the answer. How long does he need the program? Vmware 5 can be used as trialware for 30 days, I think

[Les1451]

You could use a program like Partition Magic to create a seperate partition on your hard drive and install Win98 to it.
As Gerry says, Win98 would have to go on a Fat32 partition, the drawback with this is that you would not see any of the files on the WinXP partition (assuming WinXP is on an ntfs partition). It does however work the other way round, i.e. if you were running WinXP you would be able to access folders and files on the Win98 partition.

[JohnH2]

Thanks very much for the quick reply! I am led to believe that this fellow only wants to run his navigational software in windows 98, nothing else. Also, the navigational software can run in isolation not sharing any files with other pgms or operating systems. Could we save his drivers, and other pertinent data and then reformat his hard drive using FAT32. Once that task is completed, could we use a windows 98 emergency boot disk to partition the disk using FDISK. Once the disk is partitioned we would install windows 98 in the system partition. Could we then either reformat the remaining partition using NTFS and then install windows XP or simply install windows XP in the second partition since it is formatted using FAT32?
If this is possible, how would we edit the Boot.ini file to allow us to select which operating system we wanted to commence with? Would it also be necessary for us to load the appropriate device drivers using both windows 98 and windows XP compatible drivers for the graphics card and other drives? I believe he really wants to have "two separate worlds" on his machine if that is possible. The only program that we must worry about in a windows 98 environment is his navigation program and that software can operate isolated from everything else except the OS. Thanks very much for your very kind attention to this problem and your assistance!

[Les1451]

Here's a good guide to setting up a multi-boot system :

pcnine0ne0ne

[gerryf]

the problem with that guide is it does not match his system---he has windows xp installed and if it is anything like most bix box machines, he does not have a windows cd---toshibas I think come preloaded with only a recovery cd.

the simple answer is, I don't know, given the resources you have, if you can achieve what you want.

Given what you have that I know about, I can only speculate on what I might try if it were in front of me.

First thing I would do is image the system as present so I can get back to where you are now should everything fail. You could use norton ghost, i prefer acronis trueimage (personal preference)

you will need a disk imaging program

Then I would probably use partition magic to shrink the current partition as if I were about to create a new one, then I would ghost that partition (the smaller one), then wipe out the drive completely, create a smaller partition for windows 98, then restore windows xp to the open space after windows 98, then pick up the instructions from the link that I posted earlier at

Repairing the Windows XP Boot Loader

and try to recreate the xp boot loader.

Instead of Partition magic and ghost, you could also use qtparted and partimage which are clones for linux that are available on the self booting, system rescue disk.

http://www.sysresccd.org/

Again, I have not tried this given your situation---the stumbling block is the toshiba pre-installed system.