I spoke to Dell on the phone yesterday about buying a second hard drive. When I told him I wanted to use it for a second OS he brought up an interesting point (to me, anyway). What if 98SE is not compatible with all the drivers that are set for XP: video/audio, monitor, printer, etc?

tuesday next

Shouldn't make any difference. The drivers for XP reside on the XP hard drive and the drivers for 98SE reside on the 98SE hard drive. Never the twain shall meet and all that.

A bigger problem is whether there are 98SE drivers. I can imagine a situation where the hardware is too new for 98SE and there are no drivers.

Mr. Lipid - I think that was what I was trying to say. What drivers are you talking about if not video, audio, etc???

tuesday next

What I was attempting to say was that if the hardware is too new and the manufacturers of the hardware no longer produce 98SE drivers, there is no point in installing a separate hard drive with 98SE. The video, audio, printer, scanner, mouse, etc. won't work. Not because of the XP drivers but because there are no 98SE drivers available.

Before going any further, it might be an idea to track down all the websites of all the hardware manufacturers whose hardware is in your XP system and see if they are still producing 98SE drivers for the hardware you have. If they aren't, the game is over.

Nvidia still has 98 drivers for all their vid cards, just checked the site.

Yup, you need to make sure you have all the needed drivers before you install any Operating System. Let's see, you'll need video card drivers, sound card drivers, printer drivers, maybe modem drivers, maybe ethernet (NIC) card drivers, motherboard chip set drivers, etc. It's hard for me to imagine that these aren't available for Win98, except maybe the motherboard chipset drivers. Motherboard chipset drivers are easy to overlook, but make a big difference. They include things like IDE bus mastering drivers. Your computer *should* work without them, but they DO make a difference.

Albert

Albert - How do I know what chipset drivers my XP computer has? Thanks.

tuesday next

While nVidia does indeed have a 98SE driver on its site, it's not a driver I've been able to get to work on my 98SE box, even with an nVidia FX5700LE card.

Worth noting that one can go HERE and select drivers from virtually the entire history of nVidia. Valuable resource.

You could go HERE and take a look at the Everest Home Edition. I'm using the older AIDA version and it is amazing. You'll learn more than you ever knew there was to know about your system.

Wow!

tuesday next

Sorry TuesdayNext, I was busy yesterday and didn't check in. What Mr. Lipid said. You need to know what kind of motherboard you have, unless it's a brand name computer like Dell. Then you might get by with knowing the model number of the computer. Then go to the manufacturer's web site (motherboard or system as needed) and look for downloads in their tech support section. It should be pretty straight forward.

Albert