Dual-Boot Issues with WinXP and Win98SE

Hello,

My PC has an 80 GB hard drive with 2 partitions: (1) 30 GB partition with Win98SE and (1) 50 GB partition with WinXP. The Win98SE partition was created long ago in FAT32 format. The WinXP partition, created Saturday evening was formatted with NTFS. The idea of course is to dual-boot both Operating systems.

Although WinXP boots just fine, Win98SE freezes at the splash screen. I have to restart the PC to clear the problem. When I attempt to re-enter Win98SE, I can only enter in Safe Mode.

I'm thinking this issue is the result of having formatted the XP partition with NTFS instead of FAT32. Although I don't see why this should be a problem, it seems to be nevertheless.

Is there any way I can resolve this issue short of wiping out the XP partition, reformatting it with FAT32 and reinstalling XP all over again? Also, will this affect the Win98SE partition in anyway.

Thanks for any insights into this matter.

Some system information:

Pentium III 550 Mhz processor
256 MB System RAM
ATA-133 PATA Drive controller
2 Hard drives: 1 - 80 GB, 1 - 40 GB

Regards,
Jeff

 

I discovered the problem - I had Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition installed on both the Win98 and WinXP partitions. I performed a step-by-step OS load on Win98 and skipped all the Symantec load requests. Win98 booted normally. I uninstalled the Win98 A/V installation. I now have a fully functional dual-boot system.