The idea of a dual-boot is to use two operating systems, and keep them separate, despite being on the same hard drive, or within the same computer. It is never a good idea to boot up within one operating system, and then use disk utilities on the partition that contains another OS. That's just asking for trouble, such as data corruption, or a damaged MFT. It is exactly this sort of behavior that can cause big problems when dual-booting. If a program is not registered within an operating system, especially something that can cause major changes to the file system and/or critical files, don't run it from within another OS.
(1) Can I use Win XP to Defrag the Win 98 Partition? (
Because defrag utility in Win 98 stops halfway)
This is not the solution. Instead, try to discover what is keeping the utililty from finishing the defragmentation run. Check the items running at startup with MSCONFIG, or use the Task Manager to shut down all items except for Explorer and Systray, or restart Windows 98 in Safe Mode and run the scan from there. Turn off any screensavers that are running.
(2) Can I use Chkdsk to scan Win 98 partition C using
Win XP?
If the utility doesn't actually exist for use within the operating system, when the OS is loaded, don't use it.
Use <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/usingwindows/maintaining/tips/beginner/scandisk.asp" target="_new">Scandisk</A>, not CHKDSK to scan the Windows 98 partition, and do it from within Windows 98.
(3) Can I scan all 5 partitions for viruses with Norton
antivirus installed in Win XP partition?
If you want to use Norton on all partitions, install it twice ... once within Windows 98, and once within WinXP.
You can ignore my advice, if you wish, but don't be surprised when something goes wrong down the road and you end up dropping in a boot disk to format everything and start over from scratch. I've seen it happen before ... I once saw a user run Norton Speed Disk from within a Win98 partition on a partition that contained Win2K, and somewhere in the middle of the defragmentation run, Win2K became inaccessible, the hard drive developed an unmountable boot volume error that couldn't be repaired, and all data on the Win2K partition was lost. It wasn't pretty.
Toey
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