Hello friends May be this might be useful. I install 98 with backup/restore utility. My way of auto installation of XP. Then on second partition or the same partition XP without pagefile.sys. Then i get a dual boot. So after booting into XP, Install all ur fav progies n games. Test each of them, to make sure they work... etc etc... all ur drivers also. Tweak ur xp. make sure u unhide all files relates to win xp dir and progra files. Then boot into 98 > goto backup utility of 98. Select the folders used by XP, eg my documents and settings winxp (or windows- what ever name u gave to windows dir) check all files in the root program files folder and like this all folders and files used by xp. then start the backup process. make sure u have ~ > 3gb of free space on the disk / partition u r planning to save the image file. Then when ur XP crashes or U crash it ... lol then just boot into 98, goto restore option, and click ok. Over write old files or new ones as u like. It takes ~20min to install Windows Xp including Office Xp Interdev .net framework winzip winrar tweaks easy cleaner adobe gif animator acdess 6 service pack1 , and now service pack 2b lan settings mcafee antivirus zone alarm cute ftp3 pro Easy CD-DA Extractor 7 Eraser Ahead Links Organizer Bulk Rename Utility BitStrike Software Mozilla Firefox Microsoft Visual Studio Opera Onlinetimer Nokia Ulead Systems UltraISO Virtual CD v4 SlimBrowser Yahoo! Msn Webroot Spamihilator inetpub U can exclude any folder, u think is not needed at that time for reinstallation. The whole task id completed in 20 minutes ... in the mean while I make a nice cup of tea for myself and wait for XP to start PS: dont forget to include boot.ini file. Hope it will help.