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First post, by Tetrium

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To make a long story short (and because it being past 4:30am 😜 ), I'm planning on building several rigs with 9x. I personally favor ME but I see that 98SE has some good flexibility (and I want to try it out a bit more).

Now my plan is to create a 98SE&ME dualboot setup, preferably with both windows on the same partition (in case I want to clone the install to other harddrives instead of having to tweak both windows for every single dual install I do).
I want ME because I've had it for like 10 years and don't want to go without and I want 98SE so I have an alternative when some games won't work in ME without a lot of hassle.
Having 2 OS'es on 1 machine will also mean I won't have to swap systems around as much when I have another lan-party. It will have greater flexibility what games are concerned.

I think I only have the oem version of 98SE but for ME I own an oem, an upgrade (which I probably won't be using) and this other weird version (not an oem nor retail, it's a system builder version with the product key already on the cd).
It's been a long time since I tried a dual boot but iirc it's about installing the older windows first and then starting setup of the newer windows from within the older windows. I figure the newer windows won't install if it's an oem.
I don't remember exactly how I setup the thing but iirc I had one windows in a folder named "WIN98" and the second in "WINME" instead of the default "WINDOWS" directory. Not sure if it'll cause serious problems that way.

The other part of the plan is:Can I clone these installs to other harddrives?
I have virtually no experience with cloning (except for putting harddrives from one system into another system and then booting from it, it finds the new drivers, reboots a couple times etc etc).
I'm kinda hoping this can be done by fdisking+formatting the new harddrive, making it bootable with DOS or something and then simply copying the whole content of the other harddrive to the new one from some master system (probably using XP).

Whatever way I'm going to use for cloning, it's gotta be able to be done on harddrives with different sizes and it has to be not too complicated or have too many limitations. I'll need a flexible way to copy the whole dualboot install to a new harddrive, boot from it in the new machine and let it install the new standard windows drivers if applicable.

So in short, I have a plan but also a whole bunch of potential and very diverse problems.
Could anyone push me in the right direction?

Reply 2 of 27, by Jorpho

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Cloning is quite a trivial operation. You don't even have to format the new partition, much less make it bootable. When I was cloning FAT32 partitions with Norton Ghost, I didn't even have to worry about matching partition sizes. The bigger problem is that Windows might not work very well if you transplant it to a completely different set of hardware without doing a fresh re-install.

The dual-booting is a much crazier operation. It could probably be done, but I imagine you'd need to implement a lot of kludges. For one thing, even if they have different Windows directories, both installations will try to use C:\Program Files by default, although you can change that after installation. I'm also thinking you might need some kind of bootloader to swap the different versions of IO.SYS before the system actually starts booting.

It really would be much easier to use two separate partitions. Or why don't you try the 98SE-ME hybrid documented on mdgx.com and the msfn forums? Also, do you actually know of any games that will run under 98SE but not ME "without a lot of hassle" ?

Reply 4 of 27, by leileilol

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Better USB device and peripheral support for one thing, high-colored systray icons, faster booting times and the ability to install a more recent DirectX9.0c. That's all I can think of.

I remember running into a series of "Addawins" BAT files that does this exact thing for Win9X, but unfortunately it's BAT files, and those have no sanity checking and there is a lot of odd and annoying self-promotion in it. I have never got that addawins stuff working myself

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Reply 6 of 27, by Davros

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Q: What operating systems is DirectX 9 compatible with?
A: Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000(Professional and server editions), Windows XP. and Windows Server 2003. DirectX 9 is NOT compatible with Windows NT or Windows 95.

according to this page :
http://www.activewin.com/faq/faq_7.shtml

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Reply 7 of 27, by Jorpho

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What that page doesn't seem to mention is that there have been many, many different versions of DirectX 9.0c, and while I've never been clear on just what the difference is between them, I can certainly believe at some point they supported ME but not 98SE, especially given the details supplied by Wikipedia.

Reply 8 of 27, by leileilol

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Jorpho wrote:
leileilol wrote:

the ability to install a more recent DirectX9.0c.

Really? Do you have the details?

According reportedly to this, Win98SE is limited up to the Dec 2006 version and WinME is up to a Oct 2008 version

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Reply 9 of 27, by Tetrium

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Thank you all for the responses 😀

I haven't decided yet about doing the dualboot thing, the cloning is of a higher priority for me. Norton Ghost wasn't a free program, right?

Jorpho wrote:

It really would be much easier to use two separate partitions. Or why don't you try the 98SE-ME hybrid documented on mdgx.com and the msfn forums? Also, do you actually know of any games that will run under 98SE but not ME "without a lot of hassle" ?

I have thought about using MDGX hybrid install but, since I've never actually tried it, I'd rather not install it on 5 systems and then finding out I somehow borked it.
If I use somekind of program to copy the complete install, would it be possible to edit the "ghost" or "ISO" file with a file browser or something?

I know a couple games, one is somekind of startrek 'fleet' game and the other was I think battlezone. From the top of my head so I could be wrong.
I'm not sure how well 95 games will work on ME. I specifically want Voodoo 1 games to work.

In the end if dual boots aren't a viable option, I can always opt to create a couple separate 98SE builds and accept I might have to do a bit more unplugging and plugging with a couple more systems if I want to play a particular game in a lan.

Is it possible to have somekind of program make a formatted harddrive bootable, slave that harddrive in another rig (for convenience I'll just call that system the 'master rig') and copy the entire contents of a complete install (copied to the master rig from another slaved drive with a completely tweaked install)to the newly formatted and bootable disk?
That would make things very easy for me with a lot of flexibility.

Reply 10 of 27, by leileilol

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Tetrium wrote:

I know a couple games, one is somekind of startrek 'fleet' game and the other was I think battlezone. From the top of my head so I could be wrong.

Both Starfleet Command and Battlezone work fine on Windows ME but SFC has major issues in WinXP. Battlezone works in XP but it's a bit unstable concerning the AVI video routines it uses.

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Reply 11 of 27, by Jorpho

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Tetrium wrote:

I haven't decided yet about doing the dualboot thing, the cloning is of a higher priority for me. Norton Ghost wasn't a free program, right?

That's just what I had on hand at the time. There are many, many cheap, free, and even open source cloning applications out there now, and they all pretty much work the same, at least as far as old FAT32 partitions and Win9x installations are concerned.

Jorpho wrote:

If I use somekind of program to copy the complete install, would it be possible to edit the "ghost" or "ISO" file with a file browser or something?

Ghost definitely allows this. Some others allow you to boot the image directly in VMware or Virtual PC, and presumably could be edited with the relevant tools. It depends on the program.

I know a couple games, one is somekind of startrek 'fleet' game and the other was I think battlezone. From the top of my head so I could be wrong.
I'm not sure how well 95 games will work on ME. I specifically want Voodoo 1 games to work.

I don't see why a Voodoo 1 game designed for Windows 95 wouldn't work under ME, unless it's maybe Super EF2000, which only seems to cause problems for everyone.

Is it possible to have somekind of program make a formatted harddrive bootable, slave that harddrive in another rig (for convenience I'll just call that system the 'master rig') and copy the entire contents of a complete install (copied to the master rig from another slaved drive with a completely tweaked install)to the newly formatted and bootable disk?
That would make things very easy for me with a lot of flexibility.

Any imaging program is capable of that, but there's really no need to bother when you could just burn an image to a CD or DVD and clone it from there. (Most imaging programs involve booting from a CD, since trying to make an image of a drive while it's being used by an operating system is generally impractical.)

And like I said, imaging programs do not generally care whether destination partitions are formatted and bootable.

Don't forget that defragging prior to imaging is very important, especially where FAT32 is concerned. You can also often cut down the image file size by turning off virtual memory before taking the image (or by moving the swap file to another drive).

Reply 13 of 27, by Davros

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here

Deleted *** didnt know it also contained the full game
the link that leads to that page says Patches and Updates (for install from disc only)

Last edited by Davros on 2010-09-10, 20:38. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 15 of 27, by Tetrium

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leileilol wrote:

Very strange for a "patch" to contain the full commercial game with it.

Downloaded!!! 😁

Jorpho, could you name one, or a couple, good freeware ghosting programs?

Back on topic, I've decided to not do the dualboot thingy (atleast not yet 😁 ) and settle for ME (and 98SE on a few 'special' rigs I have planned 😀 ).
I prefer ME over 98SE since I'm way more familiar with it and I just like a couple things about it that 98SE doesn't have (like the faster boot, easier driver base, USB and .zip support and the 'more modern' looks).

Currently I'm doing some reading on that BZ forum Davros posted. Funny that the dancing man from youtube is actually involved in it!

Reply 16 of 27, by Jorpho

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Tetrium wrote:

Jorpho, could you name one, or a couple, good freeware ghosting programs?

Looks like Wikipedia's a little bit of a mess on the subject at the moment, but they've got everything you need to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_di … loning_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_cloning_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_imaging_software

I also see they don't mention http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/ for whatever reason.

PING/PartImage is probably the most popular one, but I don't know how easy it is to edit the images it creates.
http://ping.windowsdream.com/

You also might be entitled to a free copy of Seagate DiscWizard, which is practically Acronis.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/down … oads/discwizard

You might want to keep an eye on Giveawayoftheday; they'll probably feature another one of Paragon's many products sooner or later. Not that they're necessarily that much better than the alternatives.

Reply 17 of 27, by Jorpho

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Jorpho wrote:

You might want to keep an eye on Giveawayoftheday; they'll probably feature another one of Paragon's many products sooner or later. Not that they're necessarily that much better than the alternatives.

And there we go. 24 hours:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/drive-copy-10 … nglish-version/

Reply 18 of 27, by Tetrium

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Jorpho wrote:
Jorpho wrote:

You might want to keep an eye on Giveawayoftheday; they'll probably feature another one of Paragon's many products sooner or later. Not that they're necessarily that much better than the alternatives.

And there we go. 24 hours:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/drive-copy-10 … nglish-version/

Cheers! Downloaded! I hope this program can be installed when not connected to the net (it mentions having 16h today to download -and install-)

Reply 19 of 27, by prophase_j

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For dual booting I like to setup separate hidden partitions and then use GRUB select then unhide the requested partition at boot time.

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