Dual booting Vista and Win 98?

Philocalist · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 8:00 pm Post subject: Dual booting Vista and Win 98?

Need advice on the way forward here please?
I've a shiny new PC sat in a box, with Vista Home Premium pre-installed (I have the original install disks). Once I get this fully patched etc, I'm seriously considering dual-booting with Windows 98 (rather than XP), primarily to allow the use of some very useful hardware that is not compatible with Vista (or XP), and would be extremely expensive to buy again (though I'm not even certain that a Vista version even exists) ... things like a scanner with a fully illuminated, colour corrected hood that will handle transparencies up to a size of around 12" x 8", via an ultra-SCSI card.

So ... anyone know of any good reason I either should not, or cannot do this? Confused

And again ... has anyone tried this (successfully) ... and can maybe offer an idiot-proof guide to accomplish this? Very Happy

Many thanks .....

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2422

Quote:

So ... anyone know of any good reason I either should not, or cannot do this?

Yes. I seriously doubt that you will find proper 98 drivers for the hardware. That means the video won't work properly, you might not have sound and if thecomputer has wifi, it might not work. Also remember that USB doesn't work on 98 until you load drivers for every USB evie tht you want to attach.

goretsky

Hello,

In order to dual boot the computer with Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows Vista, the hard disk drive would need to be formatted with the FAT32 file system, which may be problematic for Windows Vista as it is not designed to boot from that operating system.

I would suggest bringing up a dedicated Windows 98 computer to use your specialized hardware if there are no Windows Vista device drivers for it.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Philocalist

PhotoCarp · Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 34

Have you searched for any forums for your hardware? Maybe someone out there had the same problem and was able to solve it.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1134 Location: Central FL, USA

Phil.......

If you were nearby I'd give you a Windows 98/SE machine.
I have several sitting around the shop.

That would be your best bet. Just use an old PC that was built for 98.
Trying to get 98, even SE, working on that new PC would be difficult at best.

Actually, it might not even load, even if you had a separate HD for it.
Many new mobo's won't support 98 at all.

Even if you could get 98/SE to work on that motherboard, you'd be best to keep 98 and Vista on different HD's.

That's what I do for my own system running XP-Pro/SP3 and Vista Ultimate SP1.

Each OS has it's own HD and they share NO files.
My system boots into the XP drive by default and to get it to boot into the Vista drive I press F11 during boot to get into my motherboards boot menu and I pick the Vista drive from there.
I can also pick any other drive on my system, like a Flash Drive, floppy disk or DVD.

Putting two OS's on a single hard drive is just asking for troubles.

Good Luck,
The Doctor Cool

goretsky

Hello,

Normally, I would recommend bringing up the legacy machine in a virtual machine, but since you have hardware which is not supported by Microsoft Windows Vista, you would not be able to access it either natively from the Windows Vista host operating system or within the Windows 98 guest operating system. One other question to be addressed was whether the virtual machine acted as "bridge" to allow the guest operating system to interact with the device drivers loaded in the host operating systems. For some virtual machine software packages, support for some devices is iffy at best.

If you can get a native Microsoft Windows 98 system up and running, you can connect it to a KVM to share your keyboard, monitor and mouse, and place it on an Ethernet switch with the computer running Windows Vista, so that files it scans can be speedily copied over your local area network.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Philocalist

Thanks for your thoughts guys ... appreciate the efforts; it's certainly given me food for thought Laughing

Guess the way forward seems to be to ressurect 98 on an older PC then transfer files.
Problem now is exactly where to find a footprint for it Laughing