win98se upgrade...safe?

[ChfTx]

I just read the following in a different thread:

"If you do decide to upgrade, be sure to check what version of W98 you have first. I'm on my way out the door but someone can help you verify that you have W98 OEM First Edition which is required for that W98SE CD Update above"

I recently upgrade to win98se. My original 98 was an upgrade disk to win98. I didn't think twice about what kind of win 98 I had, but after reading the above, it's got me wondering.

I do have a couple of small glitches (nothing new..HP Vectra, P2, 333MHz, 192 RAM), that have begun after I installed the se upgrade. I also installed a new cd-rw and dsl modem and upgraded aol...............all within a few days of each other so I've just been kinda sorting things out.

My question is...how do I know if I should have installed the win98se upgrade?....and any other bits of advice..

Thanks all........

 

[Triple6]

I never recommend an upgrade unless 100% neccessary - you get all the junk of the previous windows and you never know what can go wrong - a clean install can screw up, by upgrading your risking twice the problems.

However, over all it does work okay with minumal issues.

 

[JohnWill]

I had pretty good luck a few years back with the W98 to W98SE upgrade, it's the only one I felt safe in recommending.

 

[Brockman]

I also upgraded a few ywars ago and had no problems, all went well.

 

[raybro]

If I understood correctly, you don't have a full version of any windows OS, just two upgrade versions. One for Win98 and another for Win98SE. What did you upgrade from originally before the Win98... You will need a full version of windows (3.1 or Win95) in order to qualify for using an upgrade CD of any kind.

If you do not have a full version of a previous Windows OS, you are left with only one alternative and that is to install the Win98SE upgrade over the existing Win98 installation. As previously stated, this may carry forward existing problems currently present in your Win98 OS, but you may not have a choice. If and when the time comes you need to do a clean install (just a matter of time with Win98) you will have the same problem again.

 

[ChfTx]

thanks all..

raybro,
I origially had win a full Win95 which I upgraded to 98 then to SE. I had no problems that I know of with Win98. I've been hesitant to ask questions about the couple glitches I've had until I know what to ask....does this make sense?

 

[raybro]

If you still have the Win95 full version on CD (or floppies), you can do a fresh install of Win98SE directly from the CD. Start with the Win98SE upgrade CD. It will ask for the certified full version. You insert the Win95 CD and after it is verified, you put the Win98SE CD back in and proceed with a normal installation.

I might suggest you make backup of your current drive until you are sure this process will work. Just belt and suspenders caution. Always a good thing to do with PC's. There are a couple of ways to do this. If you have another hard drive installed as slave is the best way. You can get a free download from Maxtor (MaxBlast3) http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm that will give you disk to disk copy capability. An additional advantage to this is you can now copy any files you want to recover directly from the old OS installation. If your single hard drive is large enough, you could create another partition and copy the primary partition there.

If you do not have another hard drive or do not have adequate space on your single drive, you may need to get something like Norton Ghost and burn an image to CD.

 

[ChfTx]

thanks raybro..

I'm going to try it.
I should have enough space on my HD (40MB, only about 15% used)....I don't understand the "you could create another partition and copy the primary partition there. "


If I may, I have another question about hard drives....has to do with formatting and partitioning. Can I ask you or should I start another thread?

Thanks

 

[raybro]

I or someone else can probably answer most any question you may have about partitioning and other sublects related to hard drives, but I suggest the old saying about "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and feed him for life" is appropriate.

To that end here is a link to a tutorial on fdisk, which is what one can use for partition management.

http://fdisk.radified.com/

Fdisk is the built in utility for this need, but I've found 3rd party sotwares to be much more useful besides being easier and safer to operate. I've been using Partition Commander without any problems whatsoever. It has a boot flopy which when used produces a DOS interface with graphic display of the drive(s) and allows one to perform just about any operation one wants without risk to the data on the drive. Partition Magic is another software which does almost identical operations. Either is highly recommended. You can find either with a Google search.

Now, regarding your not understanding about creating another partition on your HDD. Simply stated... this creates another space on your physical drive which will appear in windows as another drive. It will usually show up as the D: drive, depending on what else you have in your system. Partitions divide the HDD into segments which appear and act as individual drives.

Read through the info in the link provided above and get back to me with any further questions. Given time and effort on your part, I'm sure we can get you up to speed. It's not really that complex once you get through the laerning curve.

As far as starting another thread is concerned. It seems to me your question is related to what has been discuseed so far in this thread. Probably advisable to keep it contstained to this thread until (and if) something specifically divergent comes up.

 

[XbrvhrtX]

I should have enough space on my HD (40MB, only about 15% used

can you confirm the size of your HD again, I hope 40mb was a mistake

If you have the full version of 95 and only upgrades for 98 and 98se you will have to load them in that order.

The only short cut would be to load 95, then boot into dos and in the windows folder change the Win.com to win.old then using a 98 boot disk load cd drives, put in your 98se disk and run set up from there, making sure your set up directory is still c:\windows and not c:\windows.ooo1 or whatever it tries to give you.

I would really suggest looking on e-bay for a full version of 98se including key, they are quite cheap now, but the prices are going up, and much easier than all that installing

 

[raybro]

XbrvhrtX.. Tjanks for checking in on this. When I saw your other post, I began to question te advice I had given previously.

ChfTx.. Suggest you disregard my previous advice about how to do a fresh install of Win98SE from an upgrade CD. I have done this kind of operation from Win98 to Win98SE only. I had erroneously assumed the same thing would work with Win95.

At this point, it would seem to me the best alternative would be to consider try to obtain a full version of Win98SE. Of course, you could always go tyhe route of installing the OS's in order as suggested by XbrvhrtX.

Apologies for the false lead. My bad

 

[Bryan]

Just to clear this up, the link below is the thread I think you saw that made you question a W98SE upgrade. The reason I had them check for their version is because the W98SE upgrade CD that I was suggesting they buy, would only work for W98 OEM installs. Other than that, there are other W98SE upgrade CDs available for purchase that will upgrade W95 and all W98 installs. I hope that clears up any confusion.



http://forums.techguy.org/t163294/s.html

 

[JohnWill]

Actually, the W98SE Update was the one that was ONLY for W98, any W98SE Upgrade should do all the prior versions.

 

[raybro]

johnwill.. That was the original rational for my recommendation to ChfTx. At this point, I must defer to others because I have almost zero experience with Win95. Do you feel confident to recommend using the Win98SE upgrade CD with the Win95 full version for certification as part of a fresh install of Win98SE?

 

[Bryan]

Thanks for correcting my terminology John. Update was the correct term I should have used.

BTW John, I never heard back from you on the thread about the ISA Winmodems where you said "I would go out on a limb here and say that there never was an ISA WinModem."

Just thought you'd like to know for your future reference that they did make ISA Winmodems. I posted a link to one or two of them in that thread for your reference.

Have a nice weekend and thanks again ......