If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining virtually full backwards compatibility with 9x-era software, I'd say POSReady 2009's what you're looking for, and as a former WinFLP user, I tell you I've never looked back.

4 things that stand out about this OS:

1. Fully customizable installation allowing you opt out pretty much everything in the OS.
2. Still supported my MS (updates will continue to roll out regularly till 2019).
3. Boots and shuts down faster than anything else in the XP line, and that on default settings.
4. The only important missing feature would be the compatibility tab, which can be easily transplanted back from a regular WinXP CD (slayerxp.dll)

If you also plan to use it as your everyday rig, which thing I'm currently doing (and boy does it work great), there's a number things you ought to be mindful of, but I won't go into details because you probably won't anyways.

DosDaddy wrote on 2018-05-02, 03:59:

If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining v […]
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If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining virtually full backwards compatibility with 9x-era software, I'd say POSReady 2009's what you're looking for, and as a former WinFLP user, I tell you I've never looked back.

4 things that stand out about this OS:

1. Fully customizable installation allowing you opt out pretty much everything in the OS.
2. Still supported my MS (updates will continue to roll out regularly till 2019).
3. Boots and shuts down faster than anything else in the XP line, and that on default settings.
4. The only important missing feature would be the compatibility tab, which can be easily transplanted back from a regular WinXP CD (slayerxp.dll)

If you also plan to use it as your everyday rig, which thing I'm currently doing (and boy does it work great), there's a number things you ought to be mindful of, but I won't go into details because you probably won't anyways.

Very interesting. Other threads have suggested that WinFLP was hard to customize vs standard XP, especially after install. Is POSREADY 2009 simpler for customization?

Is it possible to restore dual boot functionality with Win9x at all? For instance using fixboot /mbr from an XP CD?

9x and xp need seperate partitions so they dont walk all over each other.

XP's ntldr is able to boot a 9x partition just fine with a manually added entry to boot.ini

it SHOULD add it automagically, if you create the win9x install first, then install xp in a new partition.

betamax80 wrote on 2024-07-27, 02:45:

Is it possible to restore dual boot functionality with Win9x at all? For instance using fixboot /mbr from an XP CD?

What does this have to do with WinXP FLPC in any way? Why are you posting in this thread?

Mods: it may be time to lock this thread and merge betamax80's post with this one:
What Is the Best Way to Creating a Windows XP/98 Dual Booting Environment?