I've got a RedHat 8 partition which I use for virtually everything - work, email, surf, etc, etc, and a (currently) XP partition which I use solely for playing games. There's a speed problem with GTA3 which GTA3 blames on XP.

I'd like to change my windows partition back to 98 to try and cure this.

I installed the machine the recommended way - install windows first, then RH8, to let GRUB take control of boot loading. I presume if I try and install win98, it will try and capture the whole disk - which I definitely don't want.

Any ideas, folks?

Dave.

If you have the partition pre-formatted before installing, you should be able to install Windows 98, then boot into linux and re-install grub.

XP uses ntfs IIRC and 98 uses fat32, so format your windows partition as fat32 and you should be ok.

Just don't let the Windows install do that because I have had it to find an extended partition and tried to format that, but I hit the power switch and hand partitioned the disk again and recovered my Linux. (whew!)

# Freeware partitioning tool
Ranish Partition Manager

Use RH fdisk or cfdisk to change the filesystem type back to FAT32. You can then format using mkfs but you will need to zero out the parition before installing using dd command. Or before you install, boot 98 install CD to the DOS prompt and format the partition with the DOS format command.

Win98 will install to that partition and ignore any linux stuff. Change that drive to bootable flag to that partition if not already so.

However, your grub will be overwritten by windows which you can't avoid. You can use the RH 1st cd and select rescue mode or use a boot floppy and then use the grub-install command to restore the boot loader to the MBR.