Upgrade to Win 2K from Win 98SE Problem

[Tom11]

Hope this belongs here and not in the Win 98 forum.

I'm trying to upgrade an HP Pavilion which originally shipped with 98SE to Win 2K. I chose Win 2K and not XP because I don't think it has the resources to handle XP. It's a P III @ 533 MHz with 384 Mb system RAM and a 20 Gb drive. Windows is controlling the swap file and I've tried removing all running programs except Explorer & Systray. I did consider manually setting the swap file Min/Max, but haven't tried that yet. I'm trying to avoid doing a format and clean install in order to salvage as many programs and data as possible, even though I know a format and clean install would be better; but if that's what I have to do, I'll do it.
The problem I'm having is that I have run into an invalid page fault with every attempt at the upgrade. Winnt32 is causing the fault in Kernel 32 at 017f:bff88396. All the searching I've done on this fault seems to indicate that this could be a failed read attempt caused possibly by bad RAM. The RAM seems to check out OK, so I'm at a loss as to how to solve the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated. T.I.A.

 

[eyec]

HP Pavillions especially are not recommended for upgrade to W2K!

I have a 6736 that came with ME (i know, i know don't laugh) and i tried to upgrade it to W2K also. i managed to do it but only for awhile.

the reason being is that HP did not make most of their drivers for W2K - they jumped directly to XP.

after a major crash (when i did manage to get W2K working) i went back to ME due to the inordinate amount of upkeep tweaking.

in my opinion, it you do not have to upgrade for other reasons stay with 98SE it was the most stable and reliable OS since maybe XP.

 

[Tom11]

eyec,

Thanks for the input.

I did check HP's site for drivers, etc. (I don't upgrade ANYTHING till I'm sure I have the correct drivers on hand first.), and it does seem that driver availability varies widely model to model. There are some models with no Win 2K drivers at all. I also went to Intel's site, since the motherboard has an Intel CPU, an Intel Graphics processor, and an Intel chipset. It was there that I found just about anything I needed. I found a new graphics driver, chipset driver, an .INF updater for USB & AGP handling, and another for the drive controller that's supposed to speed up data delivery from the drive to the CPU. All written by Intel for Win 2K.

 

[noobtechie]

Tom11,

FYI, One of my boxes is currently running XP on a PIII@488Mhz with 384Mb, it has been running fine for 3 years, just make sure you don't have many processes running that you don't need. ie. acrobat reader auto loader and the likes

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Hope this helps.

 

[eyec]

make sure you get the driver for your MODEM. when i upgraded it wiped out all of my drivers for the OEM installed modem and i had to go online on another machine to get them once i figured out what happened.

 

[noobtechie]

http://www.theemiratesnetwork.com/computers/webmaster/prog01.htm

backup driver

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Hope this helps.

 

[Tom11]

Thanks to all who replied.

After considerable digging, I found the offending file. There was a .dll in QuickBooks called 'Qbconv32.dll' which was causing setup to hang. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/252725/en-us

After renaming the file, setup proceeded normally.

Here's the 'Home Page' for the search results:

http://support.microsoft.com/search...ery=upgrading+windows+98+to+windows+2000&adv=

Thanks again.

 

[Gottesser]

My only suggestion is that the OS upgrade option should be considered off the table at all times.

The ONLY time you attempt an MS OS upgrade is when you have to upgrade the OS because of some connectivity issue and the box contains some proprietary software/hardware config where you no longer have access to the software or cannot ID where the software/driver came from. (However, OS usually requires driver upgrade as well.)

 

[eyec]

just having ME is enough reason to upgrade