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I am currently using Win 98SE. Being a quadriplegic I use Voice Recognition (VR) software which limits me somewhat on which OS I can use. I have collected new components for a new computer and are considering upgrading to Win XP. I have spent numerous hours reading and talking to people and realize the positive and negative aspects of both OS's. What I would like to do if possible, is to create a temporary partition on my current harddrive and install XP on it to be able to check the compatibility between XP and my VR software. I have talked with a couple of people on a VR forum board and they have had success with XP and the same VR software that I have, but I would like to be able to try it myself. I have downloaded the necessary drivers to work with my current sound-card and video-card. Is it possible to set up a temporary partition in order to test the software compatibility without doing a new install. I will do a fresh install for the new computer. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

My current computer specs:

PII 450
384 MB PC100 Memory
Win 98SE
5 Gig Harddrive space available

Hi. I am not too sure about the requirements of your VR programs, but your system specs do not look too high end, no offence intended. Thus, I would not recommend you to upgrade to windows XP.

Basically what you need is some partioning software like partion magix 7. Then you can make a new partition without having to reformat. After that, you can just install XP onto that fresh partition and everything should work fine. However, I would recommend you get a friend to help with the install, because you cant use any VR programs during the install process

I have xp pro installed on a 500 intel PIII and it is borderline at best...so it would be better to run a higher clocked system...thats not saying yours wont run it fine...but with the resourses the speech recog software will be using..i would doubt that it would run with out a few lockups and or kinks...on the other hand...u just never know...wouldnt hurt to try it..u just mite get lucky..have head of people with 350's running it...nature of the beast...one thing i will tell you...xp just LOVES ram...if you get it installed and running...i suggest at least 512mb of good..quality ram(xp is a huge resource hog). If indeed it does work on your system...can the pc100 and get some pc133...it will help a bunch.

To fc and Lickety...,

Sorry I wasn't thorough enough. My current computer specs were there mainly for a temporary solution. Somebody did suggest taking an extra harddrive, which I have an old 5.4 gig in a closet, add it to my current setup and then reset jumpers so that the drive I just added to master and the other drive to slave as well as make be appropriate Bios changes. My new computer which my nephew is supposed to build this weekend has the following specs:
Athlon XP 2100+ (t-bred)
MSI
512 MB RAM (2x256)
WD 80 gig 8MB(cache)
MSI 16X DVD-ROM
TDK 16X10X40
Antec 430W True Power

I think the above specs will handle Win XP.

Yup...u'll like that setup

Sweet!

If he is going to build it, then tell him to install XP straight off. However, if you do this, you will not be able to install 98 without alot of hassle, so be careful. If you want to just try out XP on the new box, then I suggest that you install 98 first, then XP

Use a partition manager, and create 2 partitions for the OS and 1 for your data and programs. Put 98 on one partition, and XP on the other. Make sure you install 98 first.