Volfandt
Veteran Member
Thought I'd share my successful foray into making my old PIII 550 emonster more faster w/new features and yet still maintaining access to my older DOS and 16bit apps and databases.
I mainly use the machine as more of a database storge server than anything else but when we're all 3 home and surf'n, it gets pressed into desktop service and after working with and getting used to faster operating systems (XP), the time had come that ole reliable had to get upgraded. The only problem with that is that it has beaucoup data that I didn't want to chance destroying and it had many app's that I still use on occasion that the XP compatability wizard told me wouldn't work with the upgrade and had to be deleted and I didn't want to do that!
Haveing gone through the Win3.1 to Win95 then the Win95 to Win98 upgrade wars, I knew that I wanted to mintain the integraty of my old operating system whilst the bugs and incompatability issues were resolved in the new, BTDT! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
My machine has a 14G HD and was only useing 6G and other than database storage, I haven't added many new programs in quite a while so the idea of running two operating systems became the plan.
Heres how I did it without loseing not one bit of data.
Enter the app Partition Magic (PM). Several sources remarked on how good and easy it was on use so it was decided that it was going to be the app that I was going to use to "seamlessly" partition my HD.
It used to be offered as trialware before Norton bought it out and now all you get is a free demo softeware app that does eveything except " do the deed"!
Norton wants $69.95 so I went hunting a better source and found it for $18.99 and was able to use paypal. Only problem is that it's compressed as an X.rar file, which is similar to a .zip file, but the seller had links to freeware downloads so after a few downloads I was ready to launch PM.
After running a full system scandisk which took the longest of all these steps, PM only took about 1/2 hr to partition my HD into a 7G C drive and a 5.5G D drive. Nothing in the Win98SE "C" drive was disturbed. The only bad thing I didn't like was that it assigned the new HD partition as "D" and this is not changable. The good thing is that it also has a wizard that moves the other drives (I have a CD/DVD player and a seperate CD/DVD burner to E & F respectively) and then goes though every program changeing all references to the new drive letters. It does allow for the other drives to be renamed if you don't want to use what it suggests.
PM also provides step by step instructions which I was able to follow easily.
I then loaded the new WinXP Home edition onto "D" drive. Since there wasn't any operating system on D, I had to insert the old Win98 CD for verification that I did infact have a licensed copy either on the PC or on CD and once it read what it wanted I removed it, reinstalled the XP upgrade CD and it was able to configure itself to all my hardware without any problems at all. All drivers were provided and so far eveything seems to work fine.
Another nice automatic touch provided by the XP upgrade was that it loaded the dual boot feature/app automatically. Sinc eit was automatic I don't know how it knew too but when the machine is either started up or rebooted and after it loads the BIOS and firmware, it will present a DOS type of screen asking which drive/operating system to boot from. After 25secs it'll automatically boot off of the newer operating system.
PM has a dual boot app also but I didn't need to load as Windows is handleing it.
After getting everything setup, the 1st thing I noticed was how much faster XP loads over 98. Perhaps twice as fast. And surf'n speed has almost doubled too! I use a DSL for internet access and that blamed JD add at the top of the page would freeze me for a good minute or so on 98, w/XP it's half that time. Pages load quite a bit faster now too.
I can also make shortcut folders in XP that'll go get the data over from the C drive and I can write back & forth, useing drag & drop between the drives also.
It's cool when something goes as planned /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
At this time I'm running several programs on both drives as a kind of failsafe. I can transfer files beween them without any problems but I would like to automate it. Seems I read somewhere that XP has this capability built in.
I can also see me adding another HD at some point. I have a 1G HD w/Win98SE already on it but what can you do with just a 1G anymore /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
I'm going to backup both drives to my spare 40G HD thats on my laptop later on but I'm seeing the sun shineing outside now and it's calling me.
Have a good un.
Volfandt
I mainly use the machine as more of a database storge server than anything else but when we're all 3 home and surf'n, it gets pressed into desktop service and after working with and getting used to faster operating systems (XP), the time had come that ole reliable had to get upgraded. The only problem with that is that it has beaucoup data that I didn't want to chance destroying and it had many app's that I still use on occasion that the XP compatability wizard told me wouldn't work with the upgrade and had to be deleted and I didn't want to do that!
Haveing gone through the Win3.1 to Win95 then the Win95 to Win98 upgrade wars, I knew that I wanted to mintain the integraty of my old operating system whilst the bugs and incompatability issues were resolved in the new, BTDT! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
My machine has a 14G HD and was only useing 6G and other than database storage, I haven't added many new programs in quite a while so the idea of running two operating systems became the plan.
Heres how I did it without loseing not one bit of data.
Enter the app Partition Magic (PM). Several sources remarked on how good and easy it was on use so it was decided that it was going to be the app that I was going to use to "seamlessly" partition my HD.
It used to be offered as trialware before Norton bought it out and now all you get is a free demo softeware app that does eveything except " do the deed"!
Norton wants $69.95 so I went hunting a better source and found it for $18.99 and was able to use paypal. Only problem is that it's compressed as an X.rar file, which is similar to a .zip file, but the seller had links to freeware downloads so after a few downloads I was ready to launch PM.
After running a full system scandisk which took the longest of all these steps, PM only took about 1/2 hr to partition my HD into a 7G C drive and a 5.5G D drive. Nothing in the Win98SE "C" drive was disturbed. The only bad thing I didn't like was that it assigned the new HD partition as "D" and this is not changable. The good thing is that it also has a wizard that moves the other drives (I have a CD/DVD player and a seperate CD/DVD burner to E & F respectively) and then goes though every program changeing all references to the new drive letters. It does allow for the other drives to be renamed if you don't want to use what it suggests.
PM also provides step by step instructions which I was able to follow easily.
I then loaded the new WinXP Home edition onto "D" drive. Since there wasn't any operating system on D, I had to insert the old Win98 CD for verification that I did infact have a licensed copy either on the PC or on CD and once it read what it wanted I removed it, reinstalled the XP upgrade CD and it was able to configure itself to all my hardware without any problems at all. All drivers were provided and so far eveything seems to work fine.
Another nice automatic touch provided by the XP upgrade was that it loaded the dual boot feature/app automatically. Sinc eit was automatic I don't know how it knew too but when the machine is either started up or rebooted and after it loads the BIOS and firmware, it will present a DOS type of screen asking which drive/operating system to boot from. After 25secs it'll automatically boot off of the newer operating system.
PM has a dual boot app also but I didn't need to load as Windows is handleing it.
After getting everything setup, the 1st thing I noticed was how much faster XP loads over 98. Perhaps twice as fast. And surf'n speed has almost doubled too! I use a DSL for internet access and that blamed JD add at the top of the page would freeze me for a good minute or so on 98, w/XP it's half that time. Pages load quite a bit faster now too.
I can also make shortcut folders in XP that'll go get the data over from the C drive and I can write back & forth, useing drag & drop between the drives also.
It's cool when something goes as planned /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
At this time I'm running several programs on both drives as a kind of failsafe. I can transfer files beween them without any problems but I would like to automate it. Seems I read somewhere that XP has this capability built in.
I can also see me adding another HD at some point. I have a 1G HD w/Win98SE already on it but what can you do with just a 1G anymore /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
I'm going to backup both drives to my spare 40G HD thats on my laptop later on but I'm seeing the sun shineing outside now and it's calling me.
Have a good un.
Volfandt