With many versions of the Windows operating system now available, some users will need to have multiple operating systems installed on the same computer. The user can choose which operating system to load. During installation, you can upgrade an existing Windows operating system to Windows 2000, but when you do, you cannot load the existing operating system. When configuring your computer for multiboot operations, consider the following points:
- To upgrade an existing Windows operating system to Windows 2000, you must install Windows 2000 in the same directory. To dual-boot with the existing Windows operating system and Windows 2000, you must install Windows 2000 in a different directory so it doesn’t overwrite the existing files (Microsoft also recommends that you install to a different partition).
- When dual-booting Windows 2000 with MS-DOS or Windows 95/98, install Windows 2000 last, because older operating systems overwrite the Master Boot Record and you won’t be able to boot into Windows 2000.
- You cannot install Windows 2000 in a compressed drive that is not compressed with NTFS.
- All applications must be reinstalled on Windows 2000 when you do not upgrade from the existing operating system. To save disk space, you can install most applications to the same directory in which they are currently installed.
- With Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 and earlier, NT4 is able to read data on NTFS partitions, but it cannot read files encrypted in Windows 2000.
Now that we have discussed the different file systems available for Windows 2000, let’s test what you have learned so far.
- What type of file system should I use if I am dual-booting between MS-DOS and Windows 2000?
- What type of file system should I use if I am dual-booting between Windows 98 and Windows 2000?
- What type of file system should I use if I am dual-booting between Windows NT4 and Windows 2000?
- What type of file system should I use if I am dual-booting between Windows 95 and Windows 2000?
- FAT is the only file system that MS-DOS recognizes.
- FAT and FAT32 are the only file systems that you can use with Windows 98. FAT32 is a better choice if your partition is greater than 2GB.
- FAT or NTFS. Windows NT 4 does not recognize FAT32. You should be concerned about the new NTFS 5, since some features in the new version of NTFS won’t function correctly in version 4, such as file and folder encryption.
- FAT or FAT32 are the only file systems that you can use with Windows 95. FAT32 is only available on Windows 95 OSR2 (also called Windows 95B). FAT32 is a better choice if you are running OSR2.x and your partition is greater than 2GB.
