Updating Win98 SE, to Win 2000 pro.

[Desktoptech00]

Here's the scenario. I have Windows 98 2nd edition on a 40 G hard drive. There is approximately 20 GB, of USED space, on my hard drive. I ghosted this 40 G drive to another 40 G hard drive (there are no bad sectors on this hard drive). I then booted up from the copy hard drive, several times and ran programs and the computer worked OK, with no problems.

I booted up the copy hard drive, again, and proceeded to upgrade to Windows 2000 professional. I kept it FAT 32 instead of NTFS. The install went OK with no errors or problems. After I booted up in Windows 2000 I started noticing strange problems. First there was no windows NT folder (c:\Winnt), it stayed as,
C:\Windows. Control panel showed icons in a left payne window, but no icons on the right payne, (I've never same control panel with paynes before). Double-click on an icon, and nothing would happen. Unusual words showed up on screens such as, c$lose (instead of CLOSE), other unusual ASCII characters, folders, with nothing in them. The whole system operates strange! Strange! I went back to the original (Win 98 SE drive), for now.

I have ghosted a copy of my hard drive 2 times now and try this same procedure with the same results. Any help is appreciated, thanks

 

[tsurikov]

Hi there,

In my experience, upgrading an OS can cause these strange problems, since some garbage from the old OS is inevitably left behind. Whenever I want to have a new OS on a computer, I do a clean reinstall. That means backing up your user data, reformatting the hard drive, installing the new OS, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your user data.

It is tedious and time-consuming, but I've found that in the end you can spend more time troubleshooting your upgraded system, trying to find where the errors are coming from. The biggest headache, I find, is backing up user data - but, as you have two large hard drives, that should be easy (transfer data to one drive, reformat/install on the other, and copy the data back).

Good luck,
--mt

 

[CreamCake]

Ditto. Practically all of my "upgrades" do not go as planned when upgrading Operating systems. I particularly remember having a similar lack of a WINNT folder when upgrading 98 to 2k.
Back your data up to your slave drive, then slick that master drive and start over from scratch.
I use ntfs when formatting, but it should not matter for your situation.
IF you use NTFS, it'll be more difficult to go back to win98 without reformatting (using your win2k cd) as your win98 boot cd will neither see or fdisk your ntfs drive.
I only forsee going back to a prior OS for driver related issues though. Make sure drivers are available, but the only problem I had on an upgrade here too were ATI all in wonder cards that drivers were not re-written for win2k, and the beta drivers crashed the machine every time.

Bite the bullet and give it a go.

 

[Desktoptech00]

Thanks for the replys. Guess it's start over time! I have most of the drivers for Win2k fresh install, all I need is the time, and energy to do it.
Thanks again.

 

[srosek2]

W2k should be a NT file system. Works better, will read all the old files created in FAT32. Even works w/ old programs from 98, ME, etc. Clean your disc, start over with NTFS and try again.