since installing dual boot 98se runs slower

I have one HD split into two partitions with 98se and XP

Originally I had the 98se installation occupying one partition on the whole
drive.Then I used partition magic [and afterwards boot magic] to resize and create the two partitions followed by installing xp.

20 gb partition for xp with 11.6 gb free

around 19gb partition for 98se with 9gb free

The Xp partition works as fast as it should do were it to occupy a single whole drive, however the 98se partition boots more slowly now
and subsequently windows explorer and 3rd party softwares open and run a little bit slower than they used to before the operation.

Its the same whether xp or 98se is selected as the default O/S in boot magic.

What can I do to speed things up on 98se again?

 

Hi,
Run Scandisk in Win 98 or Error Checking (chkdsk) in Win XP on the the 98 partition. You could also try running the HDD manufacturer's testing utilities (eg., Powermax for Maxtor, Seatools for Seagate or Lifeguard for Western Digital, etc) although they could only tell you that there may be a problem, Scandisk or chkdsk would have to "fix" the problem.

Partition Magic has a disk checking utility, run it on the drive. Partition Magic is good, but I don't know about "magic " . I have had one or two problems with it in the past. One thing about partition managers is to keep the number of "changes" to a minimum, example, changes might be: reduce the size of the single partition; create a second partition; format the second partition as NTFS. I might do these changes one at a time, shutting down and rebooting in between.

If there is a possibility that there is a Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) on the drive, you will need to be very careful. A DDO will have an option to "boot to a floppy disk" during startup. You will need to use that to boot to the Partition Magic boot floppy disk.

Something else that has worked for me in the past is to boot to the Windows 98 CD or by a Windows Startup floppy disk and run Windows setup. The first procedure in setup is to do a scan on the drive/partitions. It may be able to repair any problems. You can cancel out of setup after running the disk scan.

Matt

 

Thanks mattman the HD checks out o'k but I can't use a 98se CD as my 98se comes on a vendor licensed cd which is a ghost image of the O/S plus office and a few other things.

Maybe your changing one thing at a time suggestion might have helped avoid this?

Would it be worthwhile reverting to the original single 98se partition for the whole drive or is this just likely to compound matters? I have a single xp set up on a different pc

 

My 98SE setup runs slower now also except that I have it and XP installed to different drives and access them by changing the boot order. I haven't tried to run scandisk or chkdsk. I will have to see if it will work. I did make the mistake of letting XP's System Restore enable itself on my 98SE drive. I will disable it then run a scan on the drive to see if that will change things.

My 98SE setup is back to normal after disabling XP's System Restore on it.

 

If you have (easy) access to any "normal" Win 98 CD it will be able to perform the scan, then just cancel out of setup after it has run.

Going back to one partition, maybe, maybe not. It may work using the "one step at a time" method. I would backup the data on the drive first of course. I suppose you will want to fix the problem one way or another (I would), once you have the backup you can try these possible fixes, but you will understand that if the partition or file system information becomes corrupted you may need to start from scratch (I would say it is slightly corrupt now).

Matt

 

I think I'll end up reverting to one partition...............

and then starting over again lol


Thanks.

 

Good luck with it.

Actually, I thought whiskeyman's suggestion to stop system restore may just possibly do the trick, I have disabled it on my non-XP drives, only because of a feeling in the back of my mind that 98SE was not functioning 100%.

If you decide to go back to the original ghost image of Windows, I would remove all the partitions and remake the single one before doing so, using fdisk. If the ghost image still seemed to be buggy I would use the HDD manufacturer's utilities to repartition and format it. I would not want any hint of further problems after I had "rebuilt" my system again.

Matt

 

I thought whiskeyman was proffering some weird symptom exclusive to his own pc lol
I didn't know xp's restore could extend to 98se on another partition

I had already disabled xp's restore function immediately after installing it.
Don't use restore, even on my solo xp pc - been o'k for 3 yrs

Thanks for the fresh start advice

 

XP's System Restore seems to automatically monitor all disks and partitions when XP is installed. I didn't realize it until I had a corrupted restore point and went in to disable SR. Seeing as you had a problem as I did with 98SE slowing down I had to try the other suggestions plus disabling SR. Disabling SR worked for me.

 

Hello Will,


I would advise against disabling SR on XP unless you have another recovery option such as drive imaging.

I haven't had a house fire ever, should I cancel my fire insurance?

You can control SR to monitor only XP's partition and control the amount of restore points (size on disk).

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks all for your help.