need to know if the task of adding a second h.d. that has windows 98 on it to my exciting computer wich has windows xp home on it..the reason i ask is because i can't get anything to print from this old computer..i've tried different printers, also tried hooking up a usb card to it and running a laser printer and still know joy..so i want to see if its the program itself thats why i was thinking of just adding that hd to a different system and try printing it from there..let me know..this project is for my church they need to print some financial statements..thanks thanks and thanks
Not sure (exactly) what you are asking in your message. The first line says you need to know if... Then it kind of peters out before you spell out exactly what you need to know about the situation you described between old computer (win 98) and your exciting computer (win xphome). [bold]Exciting?[/bold] If it is truly an exciting computer it must have some form of Linux on it? If you are wanting to know if you can just swap the old hard drive with the one in your other computer, sure, just pull the one with xphome and stick it in its place. You will then have a computer with win98. You might do this and see if it was a hardware problem with the old computer. IOW, if you do this and can print then it was. If you are wanting to know if you can install the old hard drive along with the one currently in the newer computer and dual-boot (or triple-boot if you are running some form of Linux also) the system, yes you can. There are probbably many boot managers out there. The easiest way I know of is to download a newer version of your favorite flavor of Linux, as they all have a few boot manager type programs. I would personally recommend Mandrake Linux, it was at version 9.2 last time I checked. When I downloaded the three-cd "Download Edition" and booted off the cd it allowed me to painlessly shrink my ntfs file partition on my hard drive and install linux in one of the new partitions I then created. It goes without saying that Mandrake then installed a nice boot manager that allowed me to boot whichever os I wanted to - hey, I do like to use XPHome... For playing games. ;-) Anyway, you can then configure the boot manager so it offers a third choice, "Boot Windows 98 from my older hard drive." If you are wandering if you can stick the old hard drive alongside the current one, boot WinXPHome, and then view the files on it within XPHome - yes you can. Both versions of XP are fully capable of reading FAT-32 in addition to NTFS (native xp file system on a "virgin" drive installation or recommended one (to convert to) if installing over another win os) and afaik all previous dos & windows file systems. You should be able to see the old hard drive in any file operation (ie, windows file explorer, an "open file" dialog from a program, etc.). It will have a different letter designation, you shouldn't have to worry about having two "C" drives as the letter isn't written into the drive media, it is assigned by the os. Right now I have an A drive (floppy), a C drive (hard drive with main partition), a D drive (DVD), an E drive (CD-RW), an F drive (extra ntfs partition physically located on C drive), a G (& sometimes H & I) drive (virtual cd/dvd drive(s) for when I am running a program that thinks I don't mind keeping a cd in on of my drives or worse - when it thinks I don't mind swapping two or three back and forth!... These are all physically located on my "C" drive, btw.) And when I feel nostalgic or need to receive files from someone who [bold]<GASP>[/bold] can't just burn a cd for me, I can plug my old Zip drive into my printer (it's parallel... slow even with tweaks) port and it is automatically assigned the next-highest letter available. Of course I have several partitions that WinXPHome can't read. Mostly journallized type filesystem partitions I use in linux, although once in a while I will play around with one of the many others that Mandrake can deal with... I guess because, you know, it's been so long since I've had a total hard drive failure. :-D Anyway, you shouldn't have any problems whatever you do. Just make sure that the drive with XP Home (current drive) is configured as the master (I have heard that in a single-drive system sometimes it might not be set up correctly) and the one with 98(I assume, btw, that you mean 98SE) is configured as the slave drive. Might need to move a jumper or two but every hard drive I've ever seen had a nice label on it showing jumper positions for master/slave. That will avoid any little problems such as the computer not knowing what drive to boot from. You don't want to have them both in the same computer and boot into Win98 if you didn't set up a dual boot as afaik win98 can't read from ntfs (win xphome) partitions. If you have any further questions feel free to reply. Hope this helps! Later, Luvs His Ex
Also, keep in mind....... if you are planning on booting into Win98, and the XP drive is formatted with NTFS, Win98 won't be able to read any of the data on the other drive.
