squiffythewombat

DO NOT EVER EVER EVER INSTALL XP OVER WIN98 OR ANY OTHER OS WITHOUT DOING A FULL FORMAT FIRST!

Theres a long list of reasons why this will screw your pc up and slow it down! Ill be here forever if i describe them all. The best thing to do is load the XP cd and then use the formatting wizard on the disk. It will then autoformat your drive and also change the partitioning to ntfs.

Barry- your pc will run XP but it wont run it too well as really XP needs 150+mb always free to work, as you have less than 512 in the machine to start with this will hinder it. Do you know what ram it is? (iec2300) as i have lots of spare sticks so can send you some!

As for the mem stick:

Its definatly a conflict, it seems that the network drivers they are using for it clash with the DCHP drivers that SE oftern uses. Try these steps below and then try reinstalling the stick:

Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add/Remove Programs.
On the Install/Uninstall tab, remove any program providing a DHCP service by clicking the program, and then clicking Add/Remove.
On the Windows Setup tab, double-click Internet Tools, and then click to clear the Internet Connection Sharing check box.
Click OK, and then click Yes when you are prompted to restart the computer.

If your still having problems after this then its going to get pretty complicated to fix and its then up to you as to weather we push on or you just install XP...


EDIT___ Guys- do you reccon the standalone USB disk drivers (ie:sony DSC) will work if he flashs the key?

John

What key?

squiffythewombat

Doh`....Sorry flashs the pen?

/\on relfection this is quite a long shot actually i think!

Bunkerbarge

Squiffy,

I'm confused. Your first sentance says do not load XP over '98 then your second says:

"..load the XP cd and then use the formatting wizard on the disk."

So you do load it with '98 still installed so what is the OS at this point? Are they both on the drive side by side? Can XP then format the hard drive whilst it remains the OS?

Thanks for your thoughts

Nigel.D

Xp when used from a booted cd will format your drive if you choose ntfs filing system

Bunkerbarge

I might be asking you guys questions when I get home.

Probably on the phone, with a blue screen in front of me!!!

squiffythewombat

Richard,

Basically to wipe WIN98 off the machine completely before starting one uses a program thats built into the XP cd. Once WIN98 is completely gone you then use the same cd to install XP.

You can format the harddrive using a "win98 startup floppy disk", wipe it and then install xp from the cd but its pointless when the cd can do both!

tigertc

I have a cunning plan.....
Purchase a nice cheap £30 80gb hard drive, plugit into the d/ ide socket on the mother board make the cd drive slave to the hard drive on d/. Then install XP to your new hard drive. At boot up go into bios and tell it to boot from drive d/. This way you dont jave to back up as xp will still see your C drive so you just copy any important docs over. Also yopu will still be able to boot into your old 98 by changing the bios.
I did the same thing to my ladys computer when her 98 refused to boot anymore.

Bunkerbarge

I have to say Tiger that I find it very difficult nowadays to take any of your postings seriously as I have to look at your Avatar while I read it!!! It still cracks me up.

Nigel.D

you can have as many boot devices as your bios will recognise so you can run linux unix 98 me xp 3.1 even if your sad db3 or sadder os2