installing windows98 over xp? 2

[orriel]

Hi, we have 4 computers and recently added a fifth one to our collection. Our first 4 computers are running Windows 98SE which we find to be a fairly dependable and user friendly operating system. We reformatted several times with the FORMAT command on DOS. Now the one running XP, has us a little nervous. We want to reformat it and install Windows98, but have heard horror stories about fdisk and partitions. Is there a link that spells it out in very simple terms so that we can understand how to do this without killing the computer? We've never used fdisk before and don't know anything about partioning harddrives, and this system is partioned? We're not computer illiterate, just a novice with this type of system. Any links with a step by step process would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, orriel

 

[wolluf]

If you just want to wipe the XP install & put 98 on (ie, no backup) you need a 98 boot floppy (get one from

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

if necessary) and your 98 install CD. 98 drivers for the hardware would be nice (but you can always download any you need - ie, that 98 doesn't have/updated versions) after install.

If XP is installed on fat32 filestore, boot the machine using the 98 floppy, enable CD support & put 98 install CD in the drive. At the A: prompt, type format c: /q (this will prepare the drive for 98 install - the /q is quickformat). Now just run x:\setup (where x: is Cd drive, normally E & install 98 as usual.

If XP is ntfs, boot the machine using the 98 floppy (you don't need CD support this time). At the A: prompt, run fdisk, and enable large disk support when prompted. This will give you a menu - use the option to delete partitions/drives. The XP partition should show as non-dos - just delete it. Then use the option to create a new (fat32) partition for 98. Exit fdisk and reboot as instructed. On reboot, either boot from floppy, with CD support or boot from the install CD (it will offer to format the partition before installing 98 if you use this option). From the floppy, at the A: prompt, type format c: (you can't quickformat, as it wasn't previously formatted). Then x:\setup as before.

PS. XP is a much better (certainly much more stable) operating system than 98 (IMO). Support for 98 will be going soon - it might be worth your while keeping XP on this machine to become familiar with it. Its going to be around for a while.

 

[zardiw]

Excellent!! Another person that wants to go back to 98SE from XP!!!!!. I HATE XP, and am considering doing the same thing..........z

 

[Styx]

Agreed with Wolluf, except for that when you're in Fdisk you have to Delete all partitions first. WinXP uses a Non-DOS NTFS file system that Win98 won't install on. Delete the non-dos partition with fdisk, restart your computer with Ctrl + Alt + Delete, leaving the Startup disk in the drive, then create a DOS partition using 100% of the drive; format that partition then go about installing Windows as above.

Emachines, Celeron 600, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD, ADSL.

 

[Styx]

Clean-installing Windows

Backup all your sensitive files (letters, pictures, databases, spreadsheets, IE favorites, OE contacts lists and e-mails, etc.) to removable media first.

You'll need a Windows Me or Windows 98 Startup Disk, and if you're doing a 'fresh' install of Win95 you'll need a 'true' copy (not a copy made from a friend's copy) of Win 3.1 or 3.11 to prove to the Win95 install program you're a previous owner of Windows plus a copy of DOS 5.0 or higher installed on your Hard Disk (HDD) first after the intial format. When ready start the computer with a Windows 98 Startup Disk in the [A] drive; at the A:\ type 'format c:', without the quotation marks.

If you're installing Win98 you'd need the Windows 95 CD to prove to the Windows 98 install program you're a previous owner of Windows. To do a fresh install of Windows Me you'd need to have a Windows 98 installation CD on hand for the same reason.
Then insert your Windows Me or Windows 98 Startup Disk into the floppy drive and restart your machine by holding down the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys on your keyboard. Start with CD-ROM support when prompted. At [A] prompt type 'format c:', without the quotation marks. Scan Disk will run then strike the tab key once when scan Disk is done and strike the Enter key on your keyboard. *** Note that your modem won't work after a fresh install.

The modem software will have to be re-installed with the installation software on floppy or CD from the manufacturer when Windows setup is all done. The modem hardware can stay in place if you have the installation CD or disk that contains the valid driver. You can consult your modem maker or computer maker's website or technical support phone lines if necessary. Win9x setup will not have the compatible modem drivers is 95% of cases. If you can not obtain that install floppy or CD BEFORE the format do not proceed or prepare to buy a new modem. Especially if the modem came pre-installed on your machine from the factory.

For clean installs: If you're installing Windows 95 you'll need the computer's mainboard drivers, DOS 5.0 or higher, and Windows 3.1 or higher; if your instaling Windows 98 you'll need a Win95 CD or floppies on hand; If your installing Windows Me you'll need a Windows 98 CD on hand. In other words you need a previous viable version of the installation program to the Operating System (OS) you're trying to install fresh. Plus with Windows 95 you also need DOS 5.0 or higher installed on the drive first, if you're using an Upgrade not a full version. A Windows 98 (or higher) Startup Disk is mandatory.
If you're installing Win95 on a system that already has Win 3.1 or 3.11 on it you're fine if there's enough HDD space to hold it. **** Note that Win95 any version didn't come with Internet Explorer on it. IE came with the OS CD purchase on a separate CD. If you don't have both CDs and the original OS CD sleeve with CD Key on it don't even start.
The requirements for using Win95 were 386 or higher and 4 MB RAM but to use IE 4.0 were higher, a 486 66 MHz or higher and 12 Mb RAM and for both about 45 MB hard disk space Win 95 and 72 MB for IE 4.0 (120 MB HDD space total?), a 14.4 baud modem or higher, 56 K modem is necessary now, OK?

***

How to Start Again From Scratch

Most of the time you can resolve Windows problems with diligent troubleshooting. But sometimes, you just can't figure out the problem, reinstalling Windows didn't work, and you are tired of having troubles and want to start from scratch with a nice clean slate by reinstalling your operating system and all your applications software. This can be surprisingly easy, however, it must be done correctly - or you'll get plenty of practice doing it again. This tutorial is designed to help you make the process as easy and problem-free as possible.
Before we begin, there are a few items that I must address:

This material is presented "as is" and nobody can be held responsible for any damages or problems that might occur from the use or misuse of this information. Ultimately it is you that is responsible for what you do on your computer.

If you are running a system with an older bios that does not support LBA mode for large hard disks and are using some sort of disk manager or overlay program like EZBIOS so your hard drive can be recognized, please consult the program's documentation for instructions.
Do not proceed with this method!

If you are using a third party boot manager program like System Commander (used to boot multi operating systems), consult the program's documentation for instructions on removal.

If you own a brand name computer like Compaq or IBM for example, you may not have a Windows CD. Instead you might have a "Restore CD" (or even a hidden partition on your drive) that will return your system to the state it was in when it left the factory. If you have one of these, I highly recommend that you use it. You just run the program on the CD and follow the directions and it will do all the work for you; and you will not have any driver related problems. Consult your Owner's Manual or contact the manufacturer for more information.

Pre-Format Check List!

Have ALL driver disks on hand. If any of your hardware is using drivers from the manufacturer make sure that you have them. Do not proceed unless you have downloaded the most recent version of all drivers to floppy disks, or you know for a fact that Windows detects and installs drivers for all your hardware. These are things you must know before you format your hard drive. To find out more about your hardware and drivers, use the Device Manager utility in System Properties. The fastest way to get there is to right click on the My Computer icon on the desktop and choose Properties from the menu. This is System Properties (same as double clicking System in Control Panel). Click the Device Manager tab and you will see hardware categories in a familiar expanding tree structure. Click the + sign to expand a tree and highlight a device and click the properties button. Click the available tabs to view things like resources used, device status, driver files used and provider and date of the device driver. For example, if they say "Microsoft" as the provider, then you are assured that the driver came from the Windows CD and wasn't installed from a third party vendor's diskette. You can print all of the information in device manager too if desired; this could make it easier to troubleshoot problems and also make it easier for someone else to help you if you have this to refer to in times of need. When you first open Device Manager, "Computer" is highlighted at the top of the tree. Clicking the Print button will print all of the information in device manager.

Back Up Your Data Files.

Save your data files like documents, spreadsheets, pictures, sounds, address books, mIRC script, etc. to another drive (or floppy disks, Zip disk, CD-R, etc.). Don't forget your web browser's bookmarks! Do not proceed until you have triple checked to make sure you aren't forgetting anything. Even after triple checking you may discover something you forgot after its too late.

Make SURE you have a boot disk that can access your CD ROM drive. I cannot stress this enough. Boot with your boot disk and ensure that the drivers that are loading can access your CDROM. Insert the Windows CD and change to the CDROM drive letter and type DIR to make sure you can read the Windows CD. To make double sure, open a file like ReadMe.txt.

Make SURE you have the Product Key for your Windows installation. Depending on how it was purchased, the Product Key could be on a little sticker on the back of your Windows CD jewel case (or cardboard sleeve) or in the case of an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) CD, it could be on the front of the OEM booklet. If somehow you have lost your Product Key, it can be obtained from your current installation by looking in the system registry. To find your Product Key, open Regedit and navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION

Click on the CurrentVersion key in the left pane of regedit, and in the right pane scroll until you find the value of ProductKey. This is your CD Key (not to be confused with ProductId which is the number Microsoft assigned to you when you registered Windows. This is for Retail Versions). If this is an OEM version, the key will have OEM in it and MAY be called ProductId rather than ProductKey. Write down both values if you are unsure!

One more thing I should mention. If your version of Windows is an "upgrade" version, make sure you have your previous installation disks because setup will ask for them to verify eligibility for upgrade. Since you are about to do a clean install, there will not be a previous operating system installed. This is not a problem as long as you have your previous installation disks. Setup will prompt you accordingly.

First Step - Partitioning

This is the process of dividing a physical drive into smaller logical drives that the operating system manages as individual drives. Even if you don't have, or plan on having multiple partitions, the drive is still partitioned (as one active primary DOS partition). This information is stored in the partition table at the beginning of any physical drive. The first partition of the first hard drive (primary master) usually becomes drive C: and is the boot partition. Unless you use a third party boot manager like System Commander, Windows must install to the boot partition.
Note that if you are just reformatting to correct a messed up operating system this step may not be necessary, as the partition tables are still intact. In fact, one advantage of having more than one partition is that you can format your C: drive without affecting the other logical drives. If both Windows and DOS can't see one or more of your drives, however, it might be a good idea to repartition.

I am going to introduce you to the MSDOS partitioning utility FDISK. I'll be keeping it simple rather than trying to walk you through a complicated multi partition setup.

The FDISK Utility

For the purpose of this discussion, we will remove existing partitions and create new. Boot with your Win95 or Win98 startup disk and type Fdisk at the A: prompt. If you are running Windows 95B (OSR2) or Windows 98, the first screen you will see when you run the FDISK program will ask you if you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N).
Answering Yes to this prompt will enable the FAT32 file system. If you are running Windows 95A (OSR1) or earlier you will not see this prompt as the operating system is not FAT32 aware. If you do not wish to use FAT32 say No to this prompt, but you will not be able to have a partition larger than 2 Gb, which means you will have to use more than one partition for your drive.

On the next screen you get a menu. The first step is to select option 4 and view the existing partition info. Note that it is safe to run FDISK and view the partition info at any time and it can even be done in a DOS window. As long as you don't delete or try to create any partitions and use the ESC key to exit, you cannot harm anything. I warn you right now, however, if you delete or create any partitions a format will be required afterwards and you will lose all data on that volume. Now that you know what your current partition setup is, the next step (following the example, remember you may not want or need to repartition here), is to delete the existing partitions. Hit ESC to go back to the menu and choose option 3.

When deleting partitions, to avoid problems it is a rule of thumb to start with NON-DOS partitions and work your way up deleting all logical, then the extended and finally the Primary DOS Partition(s). When you are finished, the next step is option 1, creating DOS partition or logical DOS drive.

Here is how this works. You can have 4 primary partitions per fixed disk. One of these can be an extended partition, which must have at least 1 logical partition, but can have up to 20 logical partitions. Please note, however, that DOS and Windows will only see one primary partition, any other primaries will be invisible. This is really only useful for Non-DOS partitions, for example partitions belonging to other operating systems. Therefore, I do not recommend that you create more than one primary, unless you know really well what you are doing. If you need more than one partition, I recommend creating one primary DOS partition and an extended partition and logical partition(s) under it. You MUST set your primary DOS partition active (i.e. setting it as the "boot" drive), this will become your C: drive. Selecting option 1 to create a Primary DOS Partition, you will be asked if you wish to use the maximum available size for a primary DOS partition.

If you answer Yes to this question, it will use the entire fixed disk as your primary partition. This is fine if your hard drive is less than 2 Gb or you are using a FAT32 aware operating system and have said Yes to enabling large volume support. If you say No to this, you will be prompted to enter the desired size of the partition either in Megabytes or as a percentage of the total drive capacity. Once you have created all of your partitions, you have to return to the main FDISK menu and set one of the primaries as active. I recommend partition 1.

When you are finished, and exit FDISK you will be prompted to restart your computer. I recommend you do that immediately. After restarting, you must format each and every partition you have created.

Formatting your Partitions

After creating partitions, each of them will be assigned a drive letter in DOS. Your primary partition will be drive C: and the next partition will be drive D: and so on. The extended and logical partitions under it will be last. (Your CD ROM drive letter will be assigned the next letter after those). Note that if you have more than one fixed disk and are using multiple partitions, the drive letter assignment will assign letters to all primary partitions first. This means that your logical partitions on the first drive will be assigned letters after the primary partitions on the second drive. This can get pretty confusing.

There are basically two ways to format a primary partition, you can either make it bootable by copying system files and making the drive bootable. (this is only for your active primary, when you set it active FDISK writes the boot program to the Master Boot Record MBR), or you can let the operating system installation take care of that. I generally just let Windows setup handle that, for a super clean install. To do this, type from the A: prompt while booted with your startup disk:

Not bootable: FORMAT C:
Make bootable: FORMAT C: /S
Format the rest of your partitions in the following manner: FORMAT D:
(Substitute correct drive letter(s) if necessary)

Unplug all devices from your computer before the instalklation of Windows except mouse, keyboard and monitor.

When you have finished formatting all your partitions (or only your C: partition if you didn't repartition), you can then install Windows to the C: drive. Boot with your floppy disk that allows access to your CD-ROM, change to your CD ROM drive letter, and type SETUP.

Windows Setup will guide you through the rest of the process. If all goes well, you'll be back in business better than before in no time. If you are having trouble installing Windows from the CD-ROM you can copy all of the files from the \Win98 (or \Win95) directory on the CD to a directory on the hard drive that you've created (eg. C:\CABS) using one of the following commands. You can launch Setup from that directory and it will install from there.

From the \Win95 directory on the CD: COPY *.* C:\CABS
From anywhere else: COPY D:\WIN95\*.* C:\CABS
(Substitute correct CD ROM drive letter for D: if necessary)

Installing your Applications

After you get Windows installed, have a look around and make sure everything is working properly. Have a look in Device Manager for any hardware problems. Any problem devices will be marked with a yellow hilighted exclamation mark. Hopefully Windows Setup detected all your hardware and installed drivers (or gave you the opportunity to supply them from diskettes you hopefully created earlier). For devices that didn't get detected during setup, you can use the Add New Hardware Wizard in Control Panel. You can let it search for new hardware or you can tell it what type of hardware you want to install. For example, when I install my Iomega Zip drive I just select the option to manually add a hardware device and I choose the SCSI controller category, I click on Have Disk and insert the floppy disk, find the Iomega Parallel Port Interface and it installs. The exception to this is printers, Windows does not detect and install drivers for printers during setup or with the Add New Hardware Wizard. You have to do that by clicking the Start Button, going to Settings, choosing Printers and double click "Add Printer". You can see if windows has a driver for your printer by scrolling through the list or click Have Disk and install from there. If you are running Windows98 there is a very good chance that Windows already has a driver for your printer on the CD.

Once you are sure that all your devices are working properly you can begin to install your applications software. I usually get my Internet connection and related programs set up first, so I can download any patches or drivers I may need. Then I install my most important software and make sure everything is functioning properly. It is best to do it one application at a time, rebooting in between even if you aren't prompted to. This step-by-step process will help you narrow down what the culprit is if you suddenly start running into problems.

When all your most important software is set up and functioning it is a good idea to make a backup of the system registry and other configuration files like Win.ini and System.ini. Now you can start restoring all your data from the backups you created, installing other programs, games, etc. and customize Windows to your liking. You're Done

Emachines, Celeron 600, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD, ADSL.

 

[Styx]

Excellent tutorial how-to's can be viewed at

http://www.pcnineoneone.com

Emachines, Celeron 600, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD, ADSL.

 

[orriel]

Thanks for all your help..it's greatly appreciated!! One more question tho' if you don't mind? Once I use fdisk to delete partitions..do I have to create a new partition? On our other systems..again we would just go into DOS and do the Format command. We don't want partitions..so we just use the fdisk, and then reboot, and then install our version of windows? (*chuckles*...this is gonna be fun..another reformat where we have to troubleshoot at the same time). But then again, practice makes perfect!!
Thanks again guys...orriel

 

[Styx]

To use Win98/WinMe after you erase WinXP, where WinXP came on the target computer yes, you have to delete all partitions; Restart your computer; then create a new partition, a DOS partition, format that partition then re-install Windows. A computer having WinXP pre-installed on it will usually have a NON-DOS partition. In fdisk view the partition information, if it's a non-dos partition you must delete the partition; restart; create a dos partition then format it, etc.

More how-to's can be had from

http://www.pcnineoneone.com

Emachines, Celeron 600, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD, ADSL.

 

[wmccall]

Beware, you may have trouble finding 98 drivers for some components of your newer system.

 

[wolluf]

Styx - if you read my post, you'd see I gave a method for ntfs & fat32.

Orriel - don't know how you've got on with this - but you have to have at least ONE partition (eg, to use whole drive, one partition to fill the drive). As I said earlier - if XP is on fat32, all you have to do is format the existing partition - no need for fdisk. If on ntfs, you need to delete ntfs partition & create a fat32 one (use 100% of drive) with fdisk first.

 

[orriel]

Thanks everyone for your advice on this issue. I finally got up the nerve to install Win98. I was nervous about using fdisk as I've never used it before. It went very smoothly!!! I had to pat myself on the back once I had everything installed. Only a few quirks to work out of the system. It seems as if IRQ issues are popping up. It will not allow us to network. Well, if I reboot it will. So I think I'll see if there is an extra slot for the network card and try reinstalling it. Also..the sound (onboard sound e

http://www),

keeps cutting out with diferent games. It will get garbly and then cuts out completely. I'll visit the website and see if there is an updated driver for it. I saved myself $100.00 by doing the fromat myself, now just to get thru the little quirks. Thanks again for all the input..I never would have been able to do it without your help!
...orriel