Downgrading Your Windows: A Hassle

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Question: Hey, Steve,

I'm wondering if you've ever changed a Windows NT machine to Windows 98... What's the best/most painless process? What information is lost versus saved?

Later,

Craig, Minneapolis, Minn.

P.S. Thanks for the "paint your computer" tips.

Answer: Craig,

Hey, I know this guy! Craig used to work here at the "Help Menu!" home office until some other super high-tech Web firm recognized his genius and snatched him away. I'm sure you saved my bacon more than once on some absurd project deadline, so I'll be happy to tell you everything I know about Windows NT to Windows 98 conversion: it's impossible. Sorry I couldn't help you. Maybe if you had baked more cookies for New Employee Day?

But seriously, the truth is there's no easy way to make this leap between the two versions of Windows, Microsoft's all-pervasive version of the "operating system" or OS that gives people a user-friendly control system for personal computers. Windows 98 is part of the series operating systems designed for the general public; Windows NT is a souped-up older sibling version tailored for business users.

Bill Gates & Co. do not provide a conversion path to go from Windows NT down to Windows 98, so you're going to have to get your hands dirty with partitioning, formatting, installing, backing up and recovering. It could be a serious hassle. Before you do anything make sure you backup your critical data to removable storage or preferably a file server on your network.

First off, why are you doing this? Is it because of NT's less-than-current DirectX support? I hear that this will be solved by Windows 2000/NT 5.0, which will combine the general-public OS with the business-class OS. If you can hold off until then, you might want to consider waiting.

The initial temptation is to try to install Windows 98 on top of Windows NT so you retain your applications and avoid the time-consuming task of reinstallation and reconfiguration of every single program. I don't know anyone who has successfully done this. All the literature says it can't be done.

One Computer, Two Windows?

If you have a lot of drive space, the next thing you will probably want to seriously consider is setting up the system for dual boot. Dual boot allows you to choose between WinNT and Win98 at start up. You will need to carve out a separate drive partition for Windows 98 from whatever free space you have left. Make sure you format this partition as FAT, because you will not be able to install Win98 into an NTFS partition. Now reboot with the Windows 98 installation disks and install Win98 into the new partition you created.

Assuming that works, you will now want to reboot in NT and edit the BOOT.INI file in the root of the primary partition. Inside this file you should see text like this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos

Below the final line add a line like this: X:\="Microsoft Windows 98" where "X:\" is the proper partition and path to Windows 98 you just installed. Now you can reboot and use either WinNT or Win98. As long as you keep both WinNT and Win98 partitions using the FAT file system, you should be able to share files between partitions. You still may need to reinstall some applications under Win98 so your Registry settings will be correct, but many applications that you installed under NT will probably work under Win98.

The Snag: Two Different Sorting Languages

Unfortunately, to get decent performance out of your computer, you will want to run Windows NT with the NTFS file system, and you will want to run Windows 98 with the FAT32 file system. These two file systems are incompatible, so each operating system will be blind to the other system's files. If this is your configuration, then you are going to need to reinstall all of your applications under Windows 98, and you are going to need to recover all your data files from backups. If you use both systems to work on the same project, then you will end up with different versions between the 98 version and the NT version. Unless you're using a source control or versioning system, this could easily become a doppelganger code nightmare.

A Drastic Step

If you don't have a lot of drive space, and you know you just want Win98 and don't need WinNT on that machine any more, then you need to wipe the entire drive clean. Before you do that, make sure you've backed up everything you could possibly need and you've verified that you can restore files from the backups if necessary. Now reformat the entire drive FAT, reinstall Windows 98 as FAT32, reinstall all your applications, and restore your data files from the backups you've made. This is probably the best and most painless process.

If anyone has discovered a more rational way to do this conversion, please contact me and I will be happy to share it with Craig and publish your solution in "The Help! Menu" ASAP.