on my windows 98 computer, is it possible to change it to make it run on xp? And not just to make it look like xp but to actually make it run like an xp computer?

Absolutely. Just get yourself a copy of XP, boot up to Windows 98, and once it's up, put in the CD. It will autorun and ask you if you want to upgrade. Just say YES and follow the instructions.

Beware however that if your computer is old enough that it came with 98 it might not have enough power to run XP. Here are the Windows XP suggested requirements:

•PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended

•128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

•1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*

•Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor

•CD-ROM or DVD drive

•Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

win98 and winXP are diffrent technologies but you can just simply upgrade the win98 to win XP to hve one system or use another partition to install a new fresh copy of XP and like that you will have two systems on the HDD . the second one is tricky and may cause you to find the win98 not working so the best solution is to upgrade

Idk know but at my school in my computer lab they have computer which says windows 98 but when you start them up they come up as windows xp and they run like 98 though

There is a high possibility that if your PC was designed to run Windows 98 it may struggle with XP. Consider taking a look at Linux instead which makes far better use of available system resources. It is most likely you would notice an overall improvement in performance.

There are some really cracking Linux distros. currently available. Here are some examples

Mandriva 2008.1 Spring http://www.mandriva.com/
SimplyMEPIS 7.0 http://www.mepis.org/
Ubuntu 7.10 http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ (My Preference)
Ubuntu 8.04.1 http://releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/
Linux Mint 4.0 http://www.linuxmint.com/ (My Preference)
Linux Mint 5.0 http://www.linuxmint.com/
PCLinuxOS 2007 http://www.pclinuxos.com/

All are easy to install and easy to use. For your first outing I would suggest Linux Mint 4.0 or 5.0, as it has much of the software you are likely to use preinstalled.

LUg.