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 your fav programs
n games. Test each of them, to make sure they work... etc etc... all
your drivers also. Tweak your XP.

make sure you unhide all files relates to win XP dir and progra files.

Then boot into 98 > go to backup utility of 98.

Select the folders used by XP, eg
my documents and settings
Windows XP (or Windows- what ever name you 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 you have ~ > 3gb of free space on the disk / partition
you are planning to save the image file.

Then when your XP crashes or you crash it ...
then just boot into 98, go to restore option,
and click OK. Over write old files or new ones as you like.

It takes ~20min to install

U can exclude any folder, you think is not needed at that time for re-installation.

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: don't forget to include boot.ini file.

Hope it will help.