Incredibly frustrating Dual boot problem

I'm a newbie so forgive my lack of computer experience, knowledge, ect.
I'm using Acronis disk director. My problem is at present I'm using windows xp professional and I'm trying to install windows 98 se to a primary partition that I just created. I've read on the proper steps to take and I thought i did everything correct. Anyway after setting my new primary 5 gig partition to active I reboot the system with the windows 98 cd in the drive. The basic menu appears asking if I want to install 98 with cd rom support , I usually just choose the first option which says to install 98 from the cd, afterwards I get an error message that says Program too big to fit into memory I thought it was the disk but the same thing happens with windows Me installation disk. Can someone help me out with this please?

 

kaspyfan,

Just a few general questions.

Do you have a floppy drive?
Where on the HD does your intended Win98 partition commence? Within the first 8 GB?
How much RAM?

 

For best results, Windows 98 really should be installed in the first 2GB of space. If the boot sector of the Windows 98 partition is located after 2GB it can sometimes cause problems or not even boot.

Depending on the amount of RAM, you may have to limit it to even get Windows 98 to install. I had to do this when I tested Windows 98 on a new computer. The limit had to remain applied after the installation to allow Windows 98 to run.

Also, if the computer is new, there are probably no Windows 98 drivers available for the chipset or any onboard controllers (IDE, SATA, USB, NIC, Video, Sound, etc.). So even if you get it installed don't expect everything to work.

What version of Windows 98 are you trying to install? I used the first version and it doesn't even support booting from the CD. I had to setup a floppy with CD drivers, boot from that and then run SETUP from the CD.

 

I haven't really done this yet, but I have been reading up on it, and plan to do it as soon as the dust settle on my other installations.
Seems your best bet is, as Mudcrab says, create a 2GByte primary partition at the very beginning of your hard drive and hide everything else. Install Win98 here. As far as drivers go, you would do well to record all the necessary device info you have and go out and find what you can. There is a surprising amount of support for Win98 still being supplied by various manufacturers. But you do have to dig.

Finally, if you then want to move the system out and onto a logical partition somewhere else on the disc, read this article:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/diskedit.htm

Good luck
dc

 

MudCrab,

It's been ages since I've installed Win98 and I don't plan on ever doing it again. Out of interest, Dan says 8 GB. Do you have a 2 GB reference?

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/diskedit.htm

 

The reference is from the DD PDF manual and refers to DOS-based OS installations including Windows 95, 98 and ME.

You should be able to get Windows 98 into 8GB, but it would depend on how it is installed. In my opinion, having the partition begin under 2GB into the drive is a safer starting point, especially if you end up having to install a previous version (or DOS) to start the installation.

In any Windows 98 installation on any new computers, I would recommend installing in a 2GB or smaller partition at the beginning of the disk and seeing if you can even get it to work. Then, if it does work, you can move it or experiment with other things. I've corrupted a hard drive before trying to install Windows 98 at the end of a 160GB drive (of course, that's way past 8GB). Check with the Windows 98 version of FDISK and make sure the partition(s) are shown correctly and the space is shown correctly. Format the partition and do a DIR and see if the free space is reported correctly. If all this checks out, then you should be okay.

My basic strategy is to install the OS with the system at a level as close as possible to what that OS originally wanted and then expand from there. In my case, I had to install at the start of the drive and limit the RAM. Before the RAM was limited, Windows 98 wouldn't finished installing and would "appear" to lock-up. Limiting the RAM to 128MB fixed the problem. If I remember correctly, 256MB also worked okay (the computer had 1GB in it).

 

Thanks.