We have a 5x CD set of natural history bought around 1995 for £100 and designed to run on Win 3.1 and Win95 and loaded by Quicktime.

We find that it will load with Win98 but not with WinXP.
We get the message:”Could not execute the external program D:\QTW\QTinstal.exe”
We have contacted the suppliers but they don’t want to know, but will sell us the latest version!
If it is not possible to upgrade,what we would like to know is can we install Win98 on to a slave disc and use it to load this program?
How would you go about shifting from WinXP O/S to the Win98 O/S or could Win98 be made to run the CD program without becoming the O/S?

I don't understand why QT won't install. However, I'm new to XP myself (just loaded it last night for the fifth(?) time...). It's on this machine, and things seem OK now.

Have you posted this problem in the XP forum with no results?

If you need to run this under 95/98, and your XP file system is FAT32, or, you have another hard disk or partition that's formated as FAT32, here's some instructions from a friend of mine; http://www.mesich.com/framed.html?page=install98afterxp

Post back with your results/further questions.

EDIT:
There appears to be a problem with the above link/account. I'll include the information here from my text backups;
Start of paste
From mesich's site;
http://www.mesich.com/framed.html?page=install98afterxp
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Install Win98 After WinXp This procedure assumes that Windows XP is installed on drive C: No support is offered for other drive letters.
Drive C: must be FAT16 or FAT32 to be able to install Windows 98/Me after XP is already installed. The 98/Me installation routine cannot write to an NTFS partition.

If your C: drive is not FAT or FAT32, you CANNOT complete this procedure. You will need a 3rd party boot manager. Randish is a good tool for this.

You must have a second hard disk or partition formatted for FAT16/32 in order to be able to install Windows 98/Me. Installing 98/Me to the same partition as Windows XP is NOT RECOMMENDED!

It's recommended that you use a Windows 98/Me Startup disk for this procedure. If you don't have one, you can download one here. You should ensure that DEBUG.EXE is on your Startup disk. The download above does contain DEBUG.EXE. You can also download DEBUG.EXE from here if needed.

Installing Windows 98

1. Use a Win98/Me Startup disk (with CD support) to boot your computer.

2. Insert your Win98/Me CD into the CD Rom drive.

3. At the A:> prompt type X:\Win98\Setup.exe
(for Win98) or X:\Win9x\Setup.exe (for Win Me)
where X: is your CD-ROM drive.

4. Proceed with the install. When prompted for the install location, you'll see C:\Windows.000. Choose Other directory and change this to the drive you wish to install 98/Me to and name the folder Windows (or something else if you prefer).

5. Complete the Win98/Me install. Allow the computer to boot into Win98/Me.

Repairing the Windows XP Boot Loader

1. Create a Win98/Me Startup Disk

2. Create a Notepad file with the following entries, exactly as shown:

L 100 2 0 1
N C:\BOOTSECT.DOS
R BX
0
R CX
200
W
Q

3. Save the file to the Win98/Me Startup Disk as READ.SCR

4. Boot the computer with the Win98/Me Startup Disk and at the A: prompt type
DEBUG READ.SCR

Steps 1 - 4 create the BOOTSECT.DOS file needed to boot Win98/Me. For your convenience, you can download READ.SCR here. I suggest you use right click and Save As. You may need to use the ATTRIB C:\BOOTSECT.DOS -S -H -R command if BOOTSECT.DOS already exists and you get an error when trying to recreate it.

5. Configure your computer to boot from the CD drive. This is done in the BIOS, or your computer may offer the option at startup if it detects a bootable CD. Consult your computer's manual for more information. If your computer does not support booting from CD-Rom, you should also be able to boot with a 98/Me Startup disk, and run WINNT.EXE from the I386 folder of your XP CD.

6. Insert your XP CD and boot from it.

7. You'll see some files being copied, then you'll be presented with a choice of installing or repairing an existing installation. Choose Repair.

8. You'll be asked which XP installation you want to log into. Enter 1. There is usually only one installation.

9. You'll be prompted for the Administrator password. For Home, the default password is blank, so just hit Enter. For Pro, enter the same password you did during setup for the Administrator account (this is not the same as the password for an Admin level account. It must be the Administrator account password).

10. At the C:\Windows> prompt, type FIXBOOT. You'll be prompted to confirm. Do so.

11. When FIXBOOT is finished, remove the XP CD and type EXIT and the machine will reboot.

Reconfigure your computer to boot from the hard drive if necessary.

You will now get the XP Boot loader with your choice of operating systems.

Send your questions, comments about this Web page to comments@mesich.com

Best Regards and Wishes,
Mesich and The Count
End of paste

Alternatively, you could try installing it under Windows XP's Compatibility Mode, which is included in order to offer support for older Win95/98-based programs. No guarantees with it but it's worth a go.

I'llplace this one on hold for the moment as the XP user has gone off on holiday!
In any case I find Mesich's solution very daunting and probably beyond my skills! Especially when it involves making changes to the XP O/S.
It seems a good idea to try the XP forum,I'll do that. Also TJ's idea of using the XP compatibility mode(I didn't know about that).
I'll be back at a later date.
Thanks.