Viruses crossing partitions

It depends on a virus, but most likely not.
most worms and trojans look for a specific folder or file under the local drive.
If you can see the files on your other partition though, there are viruses that go looking for all .exe files and such that might affect the other partition.
The best trick would be to have the XP on NTFS so any viruses on the 98 side wont affect it, but that won't help you if the virus comes in from the XP side.

Hope that helps

I have seen virii cross partitions in the same OS. There is no reason why just because another OS is installed on the 2nd partition that a virus would not be able to infect its files.

For example, the Klez virus dropped the Elkern virus, and this virus could spread across partitions.

Now, if an XP install was infected with a virus like Elkern, then there is no reason why the 98 partition could not be infected. XP can read the 98 FAT partition. And for some of these virii, if they can see the files on any drive on an infected machine, then will infect those files!

Now, if your 98 FAT partition was infected with something, your XP NTFS partition would probably be safe, since 98 can't read the NTFS partition.

hope this helps