Dual-Booting with NTFS and FAT32

cusseta

When dual-booting between an NTFS OS (XP) and a FAT32 OS (98/ME), does the partition containing XP have to be formatted with FAT32 or is that only important if you want to share files between them? Considering I already have my A+ Cert, I really should know the answer to such a basic question , but I've never had to dual-boot with different file systems before. From what I have read, it sounds like you MUST format the XP partition with FAT32, but I'm not sure.

JDMurray

Win 9x/ME can't directly access an NTFS partition, so keep all the common files on a FAT32 partition so both OSes can access them. And if you don't need the speed, indexing, and security that NTFS provides, just make the whole thing FAT32. Better yet, pick up a Pentium 3 computer that someone is willing to give away, make that your Win 9x FAT32 system, make the WinXP computer NTFS, and both computers will be able to access each other files via the same network workgroup file shares.

cusseta

OK, I'm still a little confused. Let's say I was starting from scratch on a brand new computer with an empty hard (and only ONE hard drive). Now, what if I was to create two primary partitions. The first partition (let's say C) would be formatted with FAT32 and have Win98 on it, while the other partition (D) would be formatted using NTFS and contain WinXP. Is this possible?

Webmaster

Yes, that will work. Obviously win98 wouldn't be able to access the NTFS permission, but you would be able to boot to either OS.

oldtech

Thats what I am running at the moment, 98se on one partition under fat 32 and XP in an extended partition under ntfs. You have to load the oldest operating system first . Works fine.

JDMurray

There are many Web pages detailing how to load Windows XP on to computers which have Windows 98/ME already installed and visa versa:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/dualboot.htm
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/dualboot98.html
http://www.winxpfix.com/page5.htm