Dear Robert
Thanks for the warning about dual booting
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Re: new computer with large hard
drive
** Reply to message from "Avrom Fischer" 18:44:32 -0200
The short answer, in my experience, is No. Out of prudence I
always create a
2Gb FAT16 partition for XyWrite -- but in fact I've run it
on every kind of
partition, waaay beyond the old DOS barriers, and no
problem. I run WP v5.1 on
a 10Gb FAT32 partition. You certainly
should partition your hard disk (create
multiple partitions).
If you
are dual or triple booting be SURE to make your C: drive (where Win98
must
be) FAT32 and install Win98 first. Put XP on a separate FAT32
partition
(put your XP-only apps on NTFS, unless you also install Lindows
-- I don't
think Lindows can read NTFS, and you probably do want all your
OSes to see all
your files -- I presume there's still a driver that enables
XP to read Ext2 or
whatever filesys Lindows uses). In a dual booting
environment, lots and lots
of things can go wrong, and you want to be able
to fix problems with Win98 DOS
boot diskettes or CDs (BTW, install an A:
drive! pretty important for people
using DOS apps) -- although,
ironically, with the dual setup you contemplate, a
DOS boot diskette will
not be able to read C: because, in order to select your
OpSys via BOOT.INI,
the master boot sector *must* be set for XP while the boot
sector for Win98
is file-based (copied to C:\BOOTSECT.DOS), and DOS boot
diskettes don't
know how to deal with that. It happens very frequently that
you can
lose the capacity to start one or the other operating system, and
most
people have to reinstall Win98 (the fix is extremely subtle, but if
you know
how to do it, you don't have to reinstall). Lastly, be SURE
to create a
partition that is plenty large enough to backup each of the
Operating System
partitions (that's another reason to put your apps
elsewhere than on an OpSys
BootDrive). Use XP's excellent
backup/restore facility to keep the 98 and XP
boot drives backed up, say
once a month.
Dual booting is extremely tempting but altogether
tricky. Not something I
recommend, candidly, on your workhorse
machine.
Sounds like a nice
box.
-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
mailto:holmgren@xxxxxxxx href="mailto:holmgren@xxxxxxxxholmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------
|