Dual booting Windows XP with other Operating Systems

MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 95/98/ME

These operating systems face the following limitations when dual-booted with Windows XP:

• The active partition that the computer is started from must be formatted with a file system that is recognized by these legacy operating systems. MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 95 use the FAT file system. Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, and Windows ME use both the FAT and FAT32 file systems. None of these operating systems recognize the file system – you cannot format the active partition with the NTFS file system without rendering older operating systems unbootable.

• Partitions formatted as NTFS cannot be accessed by these operating systems.

• These operating systems must be installed before Windows XP.

• Neither MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, nor Windows 95/98/ME are compatible with Dynamic Disks.

Windows NT 4 Here are some things to be aware of when dual-booting Windows NT and Windows XP:

• When Windows XP is installed on a computer running Windows NT 4 all existing NTFS partitions will be updated to the version of NTFS used by Windows XP.

• For your Windows NT 4 configuration to access the upgraded NTFS volumes it must be running Service Pack 4 or higher. This service pack allows it to read the NTFS volumes without giving NT4 access to newer features such as Encrypting File System, Disk Quotas, Volume Mount Points, etc.

• Windows NT 4 cannot access disks that have been converted to Dynamic.

Windows 2000 Here are issues to be aware of when using Windows 2000 and Windows XP in a dualboot scenario:

• Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP can access Dynamic Disks, but a set of Dynamic Disks can only belong to one operating system at a time. Never use Dynamic Disks in a dual-boot scenario.

• Systems participating in a Windows 2000 or Windows XP security domain must have different computer names.