Installing two Operating System on one partition

Installing two Operating System on one partition

Hi Blair12!

Well, before you consider installing a 2nd operating system. I would suggest you make a back-up of your important files just to be safe. At least if anything goes wrong, you always have a copy of your important files. Yes, it is possible to install 2 versions of windows in your computer but not on one  single drive, an operating system can only be installed in one drive or partition. Seeing that you posted this under Windows 98 Category, I'm quite not sure, I mean if you still have an installation disk for it, 1) You might be able to install it but getting updates could be difficult and 2) I don't think one would install Windows 98 these days, finding programs that would run on Windows 98 would also be difficult.

"Older version of the operating system should be installed first and then the newer version will be installed last on the other drive. Windows XP should be installed first to Drive C prior to installing windows vista/7 to Drive D:"

Check how many hard drives are in your computer. You can do this by opening My Computer. It will show a list of available drives your computer has.

It is not possible to format a drive in use, including the one containing windows. If you only have one drive available (Drive C) then you need to do a partition of your drive (Split or divide hard drive into several units for storage) and make another drive (Drive D) for you to be able to install a 2nd operating system.

 You can make multiple drives if you have enough space on your hard drive. Before you make a partition though, again make sure that you made a backup of your files because you will need to format (Doing format will erase all data within the drive) your drive and then do the partition after. After doing the partition, you now have 2 drives (you can have more drives if you want). Format the first one, this will be Drive C and format the second one which will be Drive D (Make sure you use the NTFS File System).

Once you’re done formatting your drives, you can proceed to install the older version of windows in Drive C and wait for the installation to complete. When you’re done, you can restart the computer and boot it up using the installation disk for your 2nd operating system. Install the 2nd operating system in Drive D, go through the steps and wait for the installation to complete. When completed, you can remove the installation disk from your disk/cd drive and restart the computer. You will then be prompted to choose which operating system you want to boot up. You now have 2 operating systems in your computer.