Windows 2000 installed separately from Win 98, why?

[agme24]

I have just installed Win 2000 on my PC which had Win 98 on it. At startup, it prompts me to choose either Win 2000 or just Windows. Win 2000 contains no programs or files and Windows is just the same as Windows 98. Why have I got them both and why hasnt Win 2000 installed over Win 98 to give me all my programs and files??????????

Thanks

 

[cdogg]

Win2000 recognized that you had Win98 installed. It should have prompted you to select upgrade or to configure a dual boot. The "dual boot" option was used and that's why you now have two partitions on your hard drive: one with Win98 and the other with Win2K.

To be honest, that's a good way to go especially if you have enough hard drive space. Upgrading from one operating system to another is generally not recommended to avoid registry problems that might cause some apps not to work.

If you really want to have Win2000 installed on top of Win98, then you'll need to use the fdisk command at a DOS prompt. This will give the option to select a partition to delete. Make sure you display the partition information first to see which one you need to get rid of.

After that, you will also need to delete the boot.ini file on your C: drive before you try to install Win2000 again. Make sure you are running the installation while Win98 is up and running.

Hope that helps...
~cdogg

 

[agme24]

Hi Cdogg

I have deleted the win 2000 partition from boot.ini (i think i did it right) and now i am in FDISK looking for the bit you mentioned but all it is asking me is Do you wish to enable Large Disk Support Y/N? How do I use this to delete the Win 2000 partition?

Many Thanks

Abi

 

[cdogg]

Go ahead and hit enter at that prompt (with Y selected). On the next screen, you should have a menu with 4 options. Select the 4th one that says "display partition information". Make note of the kind of partition Win2K is on. Hit ESC to go back to the main menu. Select the appropriate option to delete the partition. Most likely, it you will need to select option #2 for an "extended" partition. It just depends on what you saw on the details screen.

Does that help?

 

[agme24]

I have just been in and gone into option 4 but it all it displayed was the following:

Current fixed disk drive:1
Partition: c
status: a
type: PRI DOS
mbytes: 12417
system: FAT32
Usage: 100%

Cant see where it mentions win 2000.

Also, i have just put the win 2000 disk in and must have bypassed the following message at first:

The language of this installation of windows differs from the one you are installing. The option to upgrade will not be available.

Why is this?

Thanks

 

[cdogg]

I see what happened. Win2K installed itself on the same partition as Win98, which means using FDISK is not necessary. Are you sure you want to upgrade?

I would go with a separate partition with Win2K if I were you. Sorry, I'm not familiar with that error message. Try looking it up at support.microsoft.com

~cdogg

 

[Buggeroo]

That error message means that the currently installed Windows 98 and the Windows 2000 on the CD are not in the same language and thus you cannot upgrade one to the other.
You must either get hold of a Win2k CD in the same language as Win98 so you can upgrade or choose to do a clean install of Win2k (as you apparently already did, although involuntarily

Hope this helps

/Greg