dual boot win98 and xp

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Paul881

Paul881

Look Mom, I can play!
I have Home studio 2002 (Sonar lite), PII 400 meg, 760 Meg ram, 1x 10gig hard disk and 1x 20gig hard disk (both 7600rpm). Soundblaster Live!5,1 Platignum s/c, cd r and cdrw. O/s is win 98.

I record audio and midi. I need to use DXi stuff in real time. Latency is an issue. The PC has to be a general family machine. I am thinking about installing xp on the second hard disk and making that disk dedicated to music.

Questions:

How difficult will it be to do this? Should I use a program like Partition Magic to help? Will I need to reboot the machine to switch use of the different hard disks? What are the pro's and con's of doing this?

I have searced this forum and got some good backround info but need the help and support of this forum before I actually commit to the evil deed:)
 
Hi Paul,

As far as XP goes, you are taking you life into your own hands. :)

I have a dual boot XP/XP (if that makes any sense...) and it sets itself up just fine. I used to run dual WinME / XP, though so I can say with some authority that:

You shouldn't need to partition anything if you don't want to. Just tell XP to install on the second hard drive. The first time the computer boots up it will ask you if you want to boot Window XP or Windows 98. Default will be XP, so you'll have to change that for your family.

Its pretty slick, really. I was surpirsed how easy it was. I'd copy any important files from your XP drive to your 98 drive just to be safe.

You will have to reboot the machine to switch between the XP os and the 98 os. Fortunately, XP boots up and shuts down fairly quickly.

Is your midi stuff external or are you using software synths? I've had a devil of a time getting SampleTank (VST synth) to play well with XP, but the others seem to work fine. That's the only problem I've had since I optimized XP for music.

Hope that helps.
Chris
 
That was a great help, thanks Chris.

So from what you say, once I tell xp to boot on the second drive, it will always do that? I want the win98 to boot on drive by default. And from what you say, I don't need Partition Magic to make this happen? And common hardware like my soundcard, I will just have to load the xp drivers in the xp configuration. For my family, I will leave the win 98 stuff on the existing drive and put the xp on the new, second drive with only music related stuff.

After installing xp, do I get the option to define which os boots by default? If so (and I want win 98 to be the default), after win 98 comes up, how will I change drive & o/s?

My midi stuff is an external midi keyboard, but I want to use DXi soft synths in realtime. Thats the motive for making me install xp, cos I got too much latency with win 98 and DXi.:(
 
Hmmm...well DX is a Microsoft thing so maybe DXi's will have better performance than my VST instrument. I also have a feeling that my problem is with SampleTank itself, though I haven't verified that yet. Its a pretty big synth and may not be fully compatible with XP.

I love XP in every other way.

You'll want to check out this site for tips on setting up XP for audio, if you haven't already.

http://www.timos-welt.de/cubase/xp_tips_e.htm

I take it you've already optimized 98 for audio and it still doesn't do the trick?

About the dual boot. Once XP is installed you will see a text screen when you computer boots up that will ask you to choose which OS to boot. It will default to XP after a few seconds the first time, but just go to "My Computer", "Properties", "Advanced", "Startup and Recovery", "Settings" to change it back to 98

You might want to download all the latest XP drivers, especially for things like your modem and video card, before you install it. Just put them somewhere you can find them on your C drive. My modem didn't work when I booted XP the first time and I had to dance between OS's to download the stuff I needed. Waste of time. :rolleyes:

Good luck!
Chris
 
Paul i run 98/XP and it's great

make sure that you install each O/S on a seperate partition

and in XP you can choose the deafult O/S

CYA TUKKIS
 
Thanks Chris and Tukkis.
Chris, the latency in win 98 using dxi is a known "thing", it p****s all the cakewalk guys off that they have to upgrade. No matter how optimised, you have to have wdm drivers which really means win 2000 or xp. So I have a spare drive , and I thought that I would see if anyone else has tried a dual boot.

So you have both convinced me. I'm going for it!

Thanks again for your help and advice.

Regards

Paul
 
While what Chris said was all true, if it were me I would want to keep my second data drive for data only, clear of any OSs. I would either swap out the system drive (keep the old drive as a backup while trying out XP on another) or, as you suggested, do a dual boot using Partition Magic. One nice thing about PM is that you can divide your 1st hard drive into two partitions and make the halves invisible to each other, so that one OS can't screw up the second.
 
Dual boot

I have partition magic on my system:
1 HD (10GB) with Win98 as standard HD (office,...)
2 HD (20 GB) with Win2000 as music HD, divided in 2 (partition1 only music data, no programs, neither music progs, wich are on partition 2).
First HD cannot see the second one.
 
Yes, I think Partition Magic is the answer, I will go for the same config. as yours nocaster, looks good to me.:D Thanks again everyone.
 
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