In a message dated 11/4/02 A&C Thompson writes:
>
> Installing the new hard drive is the easy part. However, it seems to me
> that dual booting two Win9x versions,
> even on separate drives, is inherently troublesome, even if it's possible.
> Personally, I would scrap the dual
> booting idea, and try to tie up the loose ends with AOL first, then install
> the new drive, make it the master,
> and install the new OS on it as the active partition. Then I would find a
> way to import my favorites, address
> book, etc. from the old drive without trying to connect to the net through
> AOL at all. Otherwise you'll end up
> with the same insidious AOL problems you set out to eliminate. Once you
> have moved what you want from the old
> drive, you could format and partition it as you please, which will give you
> more storage space.

Thanks Al and Ron for your replies.

I guess my ignorance is showing.  When I said "dual boot", I meant having the
option of booting one hard drive, or the other, not using them or accessing
them simultaneously.  (Does "dual boot" normally mean having two operating
systems running simultaneously??????)

The idea would be so I could continue to access the original drive, if
necessary, but loading up Windows 98 and running things on the new drive,
with AOL never running when I use the new drive.  Will AOL mess with the new
drive if I never run AOL after booting up on that drive?

Again, the goal is to install a new hard drive, load it with original HP8380
software, then load software for new DSL ISP.  The old hard drive would
remain on the system, and I would boot to that drive to access AOL to close
things out and access files, if necessary.  Am I on the right track?

William Closure

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