Downgrading XP to 98

[George]

I currently have Windows XP Professional and I am not
satisfied with it and I want to downgrade to Windows
98se. I out the cd in and shut down my computer, i
restart and i get an error saying "The data required to
restore your machine from drive D: is not present." Can
anybody help me out?

 

[Mike Kolitz]

It sounds like there may have once been an OEM partition - a special place
on your hard drive where the manufacturer may have stored some utilities -
that is no longer present, and which may have broken their restore process.

Your best bet is to contact their technical support, and see if they can
help you out. They'll certainly be more familiar with their particular
restore procedures.

--
Mike Kolitz MCSE 2000
MS-MVP - Windows Setup and Deployment

Remember to check Windows Update often,
and apply the patches marked as Critical!
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

 

[George]

You see, i bought this computer from a friend and it had
ME on it, and I upgraded it to XP pro and now I want
98se, so 98se has never been installed on this computer.
So... i'm kind of lost here.

 

[purplehaz]

Do you have a win98 se cd? If so, you will have to format the drive and
install win98 clean. If you don't have a win98 cd, then you can't do it.

 

[George]

i do have windows 98se cd, how do i format the drive???
plz some help

 

[walter k]

In addition to what Purplehaz stated, if you have a win 98 upgrade
cd, you'll need an earlier windows, such as win 95 to qualify for
a clean install of your win 98 upgrade cd.

Steps to do all this, according to Alex Nichol and Doug Knox,
you can use a win98 boot diskette, boot up your pc,
then run a Fdisk command. For example, courtesy of Doug
Knox:

If your hard disk is NTFS formatted:
Boot with a Win98 boot disk and at the A: prompt,
run FDISK
Remove the "non-DOS" partition, and then
create a new partition (more if desired).
Reboot, again using the 98 startup disk. Then
at the A: prompt type FORMAT C:

If your hard disk is FAT32 format, you can just boot with the 98
boot diskette and use FORMAT at the A: prompt.

Also note, when using the win98 boot diskette, choose the Cd
support option (for Dos Cd rom driver), where it will create a ram drive
(temp cd drive letter), that's where you will insert and reference your
win 98 Cd disk for installation.

- - - - - -

 

[Septima]

You see, i bought this computer from a friend and it had
ME on it, and I upgraded it to XP pro and now I want
98se, so 98se has never been installed on this computer.
So... i'm kind of lost here.

Well the only way you can downgrade if it had ME and you went to XP and want
to go to 98SE is to reformat, FDisk and install 98SE.

 

[purplehaz]

Boot to a win9x floppy boot disk, type fdisk at the a:\ prompt, delete (non
dos)partitions, create new partitions, reboot to floppy boot disk again and
make sure to choose with cdrom support, type format c: at the a:\ prompt.
Get boot disk here: www.bootdisk.com

Once the format is done put in win98 cd and switch the the cd drive letter
by typing e: at the prompt.(if e: isn't the cd drive try d: or f:, etc..).
Once your on the cd drive letter with the win98 cd in type setup, hit enter.

 

[Michael Stevens]

i do have windows 98se cd, how do i format the drive???
plz some help

Click on or copy and paste the link below into your web browser address box.
Remove XP and install 98/Me
http://michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html#how5
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
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