Want to put Windows 98 in my xp.. help me!

[DAAAAA!!]

i got like, tons of questions lol

I want to put Windows 98 or 95 as a second operating system.. My friend said he could do it for me 'cuz he's a computer nerd so i don't have to worry about learning to install it.

I want to do it to play older windows 98 and 95 games because not all of them work with xp..

I also want to play DOS games too, is Windows 98 good for that?

how much space will that take?

I also heard that win98 can't handle more than 500 and sometin MB of ram, and i have 1GB.. my friend says that it'll just recognized those 500 but i read that it starts trippin' and doesn't work right. i want to think my friend is the one who's right, but i have to make sure. Who's right?

I'm not underestimating that friend, I just need a second opinion before I do it, that's all.

[gtmtnbiker]

How old is the computer? THe problem you're going to have is that you need a computer circa 95-00 to run 98. Newer computers have chipsets/hardware where you can't get a driver for it in 98.

Windows XP has a pretty good 95 compatibility mode. Have you tried using it?

[DAAAAA!!]

mines is like 2004 or 2005

so your saying it wont work?

The windows 98/95 games i have tried do work.. but there are a few i want to play that don't.. or at least that's what the compatibillity list say..

and i also want to play DOS game.. if it's possible...

[Anapan]

For the 9x games, have you tried changing the properties of the shortcuts to run in compatibility mode?
Dual booting isn't too hard, but if you're making a new partition on the same drive you'll probably need to format the drive before partitioning. I hear one of the Norton partitioning tools can repartition while there's stuff on the drive but I've never gotten it to work.
Windows 98 will work on any x86 computer, but can't use over 2 gigs of ram. It might be difficult to find drivers for your video card depending on how new it is, but there shouldn't be any other major problems. Windows 98 has an exit to dos option on it's start menu so you won't have any problem running your dos games like that.
If your computer is pretty fast, and depending on what game you want to run, you might even be able to emulate it using VirtualPC or another pc emulator. With your dos games, there are very few that you can't run with Dosbox.

[nightrnr]

As the previous poster mentioned, Dosbox is your friend for dos games.
as is GOG.com (which offers a lot of games from previous eras).

What games do you find incompatible?

[avrame]

I second Dosbox, works great on Win7, should work with anything older.

[Betamax001]

Dosbox is pretty neat. I can play Doom on my MacBook!

[avrame]

I'm my experience, all I really need is Win7 with XP VM mode and DosBox. Nothing I play is unrunnable with that combo.

[CRTGAMER]

Win 98 Compatibility mode the easiest or DOS BOX in WIN XP. But the absolute 100% compatible best way is a dedicated drive for each system.

One of the mini guides from my CRT vs LCD Guide:

Multiple systems and cheap media player for the big screen.
A little different aspect here. An easy way to get multiple operating systems in your PC. An internal removable boot drive bay. IDE the common standard with less bugs for older operating systems.



A dedicated boot C drive each for DOS, WIN98, Linux and WINXP systems. An internal D drive can be the shared media and docs drive. Limitation of drive sizes for the older operating systems. The swappable drive route comes in handy for me, I also have a USB external bay, takes the same drive enclosure trays. External can be plugged in for another way to swap files between the different systems. As a bonus, external hard drive bay can be plugged in a USB port of the DVD player.
Acts as a 200gb memory stick to view JPGs and MPGs on the HDTV.

[pakopako]

You need these virtual programs everyone's talking about here. (DOSbox, VirtualPC, etc.)

I tried doing what you did a few years ago (back when P4's were coming out?) -- it worked, but some unforseen problems came up.

Even getting legacy drivers for my new hardware for Win9X (the newest sound and video cards, integrated or not, are probably supported by fan-groups these days) I still had the problem of the stuff being too much of a good thing for the games.

Fallout being my example. Normally, when you wander around the world map, your character plods along slowly (if walking) or quickly if with a caravan. Depending how long you were on the map, you'd run into a random encounter. On a souped-up P3, you teleport from locale to locale. This takes away from XP grinding, item finding, and special-encounter searching.

If you have a game you can't get working with DOSbox and such, you may need to invest $50 and buy an old machine.