from 98 to xp help

jasonrat

hi my friend has bought a laptop off ebay. it has win98 on it but not registered. he doesnt have the installation disk either but he has got win xp disc. he's trying to install win xp on it but the disk is refusing saying it needs to have win 98 on it installed before. but it does have it. is there anything we can do? thanks very much

CAT-THE-FIFTH

Make sure that the Notebook boots off the XP disk.If it does not you will need to set up the boot device so that the optical drive is selected as the first boot device. The XP installation wizard should start up OK and then you will need to format the partition that you want to install XP on.

jasonrat

it starts up ok but stops after its installed the drivers. and says that it doesnt show any record of win 98 on it

CAT-THE-FIFTH

Another way around this issue maybe is to actually remove the hard disk physically and format it in an external caddy using another computer!!

justpaper

bootdisk.com < download win98 boot disc,.. im guessin the lap has a floppy drive on it if its running win98,. if it dont,. then make a bootable CD with win98 bootdisk files,..

bat999

Hi jasonrat
Is your Windows XP disc the full version, or is it just an upgrade version?

esuhl

If you have an "upgrade" version of Windows XP, I think you have to boot into Windows 98 first, then run setup32.exe from the I386 folder of the XP CD (if I remember rightly) to start the installation process.

Alternatively, if you boot into Windows 98 then insert the XP CD, you should be prompted to upgrade.

Hope this helps...

jasonrat

bat999 wrote:

Hi jasonrat
Is your Windows XP disc the full version, or is it just an upgrade version?

thanks its an upgrade version.
it says windows cant find a previous version of windows on this cmputer. please install nt 98 etc etc disk first

bat999

jasonrat
I think that your problem is that XP is asking you to insert your original Win 98 disc to try to verify that you actually own it. The next thing is that it would probably ask you to enter the Win 98 product code too.
I don't know any way around this other than to borrow a Win 98 disc (or buy one cheap off ebay) and do a clean install and then do the XP update.

albertross_2

You could try upgrade advisor, it might give you more info..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/advisor.mspx

or it might not.

jasonrat

ooops dont know whats wrong with it now the screens gone black think i broke it.