Win 95/ Win XP dual boot

Question

Hello everyone! I ordered today a refurbished Dimension 2400, 2.66 GHZ and a 40 GB EIDE hard drive. I wish to make it a dual boot machine to hold all of my old programs that won't operate very well or at all with XP, even in emulation mode. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to go about setting up the drives and what problems I may face. IE, driver problems, what kind of restore capabilities come with the system, etc. I have both an HP and a Compaq with Win XP and they both use a restore partition to recreate Win XP and I am hoping the Dell comes with disks. Would I be able to reformat and partition the hard drive, install Win 95 in Drive c and then install XP in the newly created second partition? And, and this is off topic to this forum but perhaps I can get an answer on this one as well. Under my status screen it says that it is being processed and sent to the warehouse today but doesn't expect to ship until next friday. Anyone know why there would be a week's delay in shipping? Tia, Vic

Denny Denham · Answer

vicocala,

The Dell system will come with an XP Reinstallation CD which is a full copy of XP. With this you will have no difficulty partitioning and formatting the hard disk to enable you to set up a dual-boot system.

I can't provide any insight into the cause for the delay in shipping.

vicocala · Answer

thanks for the reply and the good news, that was exactly what I was hoping to hear! :o)

sRaL · Answer

i would suggest using windows 98 SE rather thatn 95 when it comes to dual boot with XP. 98 SE is more stable than 95. it's just a suggestion though

teporu · Answer

I second that. If you can get 98se, you would be much better off.

As to partitioning, You will get a disk from Dell, the OS is not locked on a partition (which to me is completely bogus, it being locked on a partition).

95/98se don't take up a whole lot of space, so typicly I make it a 2G partition. But that all depends on your software needs.
XP starts off taking about 2G with page file (again depending on how much RAM you have and what XP wants). I usualy go with about 5 to 6G for XP.

Then make one or 2 more partitions for games and files.

Again, it all depends on your software needs.

Message Edited by teporu on 05-09-2004 03:34 PM

Message Edited by teporu on 05-09-2004 03:37 PM

vicocala · Answer

Thanks for the additional info folks. I plan on putting a two gig partition, in on Win 95 and the remainder with Win xp. I picked up a Win 95 disk cheap on ebay to use. Maybe I have been spoiled by Win 98 and now XP and have forgotten how much 95 hangs up.

Anyway, if that doesn't work as well as I hope, I will pick up a 98 disk to add to the collection as well. It probably wouldn't hurt to have one around.

Thanks again for your info and your interest. It is very much appreciated.

Vic

HALO PRO · Answer

Also nearly all drivers/software coming out now and most upcoming are still compatible with windows 98/98SE and up but windows 95 just isn't good enough to keep up with todays needs and even though windows 98 isn't great it can still keep compatible with most things for a few more years at least! So if you want the latest drivers for something on the windows 95 partition chances are it is only compatible with windows 98/98SE and up!

Windows General

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