XP Home over W98- please help

[LarryC]

I have been trying to install XP Home on my older desktop
for some time;
Finally I totally re-formated the HD's and started clean.
It doesn't have many periferals - all the printers, etc.
run on a home network from another machine.
First, installed the orignal W98 which apparently runs
very well. Didnt add much in way of programs - actually
nothing on the first attempt.
When I go through the XP installation (upgrade) it goes
on and on and then suddenly stops with the message -
"Setup has discovered that drive C: is corrupted and
cannot be repaired. Setup cannot continue". This is about
1 minute from the end.
I have run Scandisk, etc. Can any one suggest next step?
the machine has 390 or so MB memory; the drives are 10 GB
and 40 GB respectively. Machine ran very well in W2K. But
installing the Sp's always killed it. Any suggestion
would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Joseph Conway [MSFT]]

My suggestion would be to do an installation of XP clean, without 98 being
there first. You can use the upgrade media to install XP clean, it will
prompt you for a 98 disk when it needs it. Delete and repartition the drive
when you do the new installation and you should be fine.

 

[Guest]

I appreciate your reply.
However I am not sure I understand
Are you saying that I can use the XP Upgrade to install a
system on a completely void C: drive?

 

[Guest]

If you install it on an empty drive, during the install you will have to show
it the Win98 CD to prove that you have Win98. At some point, it should search
for earlier versions of windows, and you should get a chance to point it at
your CD drive to find the earlier media.

Your disk error may go away if you partition and format the drive during the
XP install (you can also choose to use NTFS instead of FAT32 if you do this).

If you still get disk errors, you may have a problem with your motherboard
BIOS - some earlier ones do not handle drives bigger than 30-32 GB correctly,
and WinXP may be "stricter" about this working correctly than earlier versions
of Windows. You may be able to download a new Flash BIOS for your motherboard
that would fix this.
You could test this by installing on the 10GB drive, without the 40GB
attached - you can add the 40GB drive later as D: or something. This is the
way I usually like to do it anyway - keep the system drive fairly small, and
your data on the other drive. You can then reinstall the system without
touching the data drive.

|I appreciate your reply.
|However I am not sure I understand
|Are you saying that I can use the XP Upgrade to install a
|system on a completely void C: drive?
|>-----Original Message-----
|>My suggestion would be to do an installation of XP clean,
|without 98 being
|>there first. You can use the upgrade media to install XP
|clean, it will
|>prompt you for a 98 disk when it needs it. Delete and
|repartition the drive
|>when you do the new installation and you should be fine.
|>
|>--
|>Joseph W. Conway, MCSE
|>Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server Group
|>
|>This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
|confers no rights.
|>
|>|>> I have been trying to install XP Home on my older
|desktop
|>> for some time;
|>> Finally I totally re-formated the HD's and started
|clean.
|>> It doesn't have many periferals - all the printers, etc.
|>> run on a home network from another machine.
|>> First, installed the orignal W98 which apparently runs
|>> very well. Didnt add much in way of programs - actually
|>> nothing on the first attempt.
|>> When I go through the XP installation (upgrade) it goes
|>> on and on and then suddenly stops with the message -
|>> "Setup has discovered that drive C: is corrupted and
|>> cannot be repaired. Setup cannot continue". This is
|about
|>> 1 minute from the end.
|>> I have run Scandisk, etc. Can any one suggest next step?
|>> the machine has 390 or so MB memory; the drives are 10
|GB
|>> and 40 GB respectively. Machine ran very well in W2K.
|But
|>> installing the Sp's always killed it. Any suggestion
|>> would be greatly appreciated.
|>>
|>>
|>
|>
|>.
|>