When you want to set up a dual boot or tri-boot system (without third party programs/utilities) the "oldest" O/S should always be installed first. ie; 98, then XP, then Vista, etc.
As per your listed (MS) O/S's (Win98/WinXP);
Ideally, it's best that two O/S's be installed on seperate hard disks. However, they
can be installed on the same hard disk.
Say your hard disk is 80GB in total size. You would first load 98 by partitioning that (empty) hard disk with the FAT32
fdisk utility http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263044 creating a PRIMARY partition of say 8GB. (8GB and below sets a cluster size of 4KB, thereby saving on disk "slack space", and is
generally a sufficient size for 98.) You leave the rest of the disk unpartitioned/unused. This first new partition will be C:, containing Win98.
NOTE: This fdisk utility has a
maximum disk supported size of
137 GB. If your hard disk is larger than this, other measures must be taken to achieve the desired end result.
Once 98 is complete and how you like it, you would then boot the machine from your XP CD. During the SETUP process, it will find the hard disk and the FAT32 C: partition. It will ask if you wish to use the FAT32 C: partition for XP (overwriting {clean install}
or Upgrading). Choose NO. You will then be given the option(s) of creating a new partition in the unused remaining area of the hard disk. Dictate the size and the file system (FAT32/NTFS) and SETUP will create/format the new partition. It will be D:, and XP will be installed there, creating a boot.ini file which will give you a bootup choice of which O/S you want to start when the machine is booted.
Win98 will NOT be able to "see" any other partitions which are structured other than FAT32 (or below - ie; FAT16 or FAT12 (floppy).
XP, if installed as NTFS, WILL be able to "see/manipulate" files on the FAT32 partition.
Likewise for a VISTA install. You would boot from the VISTA DVD (obviously a DVD drive would be required in your hardware), and follow the (basically) same procedure. If there is sufficient space left on your hard disk of course.
EDIT: I see I took too long in typing,
jephree got here in the meantime. ;>)
