Formatting old HP machine

[Ronn_Bman]

This machine is several years old and came with Windows 98. The girl who owned it lost her restore discs, but two years ago someone upgraded the OS to Millenium. I have an old Win98 disc and would like to format and install the old copy of 98. When I boot up with the disc in, it says I need an upgrade disc instead of an install disc, but when I try to format C it doesn't recognize the command?

[ 12-23-2003, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

[Bungleau]

What kind of Win98 disk do you have? An upgrade or a full license?

If it's an upgrade, you need to have a prior version of software available for it to install over. This can be on the hard drive, or on a separate Win95 install CD.

IF it's a full license, you should be able to go ahead.

You may need to create a boot disk so you can boot, wipe the hard drive, and start over. Create a Windows boot disk for ME, and make sure that format and fdisk get copied over, and probably some CD-ROM drivers. I forget exactly where they're stashed, but you basically boot with that disk, reformat the hard drive, and then start the install.

Note the line above: if it's an upgrade, you need a prior version around to do the install. You don't want to wipe that out if it's the only copy...

Another option is to stick another hard drive in there and install to that. Then switch 'em so you boot from the new hard drive, wipe the old one, and install Win98 on it. Then switch 'em back.

[Ronn_Bman]

I have a full version of 98 and used a boot disc to format with the /b option to clear the boot sector, but I'm still getting an error. After it loads for awhile and calls for a reboot, it comes back and gives a 'vmm32.vxd cannot be found/opened' error. I thought maybe it was my disc, so I reformated and tried with a friend, but I get the same problem with a missing file. Finally after booting into safe mode, I can reboot into regular mode, and the install completes, but then there are several other files found missing. It does load though. Weird.

Even weirder? When I install the software for the network card I put in it, it asks for the Win98 disc, but after I insert it, I get more error messages saying the installation can't complete.

Out of curiosity, I installed XP PRO, and it worked like a charm the first time out including installation of the network card. Now this old machine is only a Celeron 366MGHZ with 64MG RAM and a 5Gig HD, so you can imagine it was slow. I'm going to scavenge another 64MG of Ram and a bigger HD from my cousin's old machine, so it will probably be ok then.

I still can't figure why the 98 install was so problematic though.

[ 12-24-2003, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

[Mouse]

Here's what I used to do with Win98SE. Boot from floppy, change to cd, then find and run OEMINSTALL. Always worked for me