Upgrading from ME to XP Home

[Guest]

Help! I am having major problems trying to get my pc upgraded to XP.

My PC was originally installed with Windows ME and later upgraded to XP Home
Edition. We recently had to replace the hard drive and I reinstalled the
original software and OS. Now when I try to upgrade to XP I receive the
following error:

The option to upgrade will not be available at this time because setup was
unable to load file m:\i386\win9xupg\w95upg.dll. An attempt was made to load
a program with an incorrect format. This is followed by:

Setup can not continue because upgrade functionality is disabled and your
copy of Windows XP only allows upgrades.

I searched Knowledge Base and tried many things including copying the
software
to the harddrive and running the upgrade from there Same error.

Started the PC in safe mode -- same error.

I've stopped all tasks except for Explorer and repeated the upgrade attempt
but still doesn't work. PLEASE HELP!!

When I attempt to initiate a support email -- I don't have my PID (I have
the product key but not the identifier). I purchased the upgrade directly
from the Microsoft store. I can't get the PID off the PC since XP has not
been installed. The old PID from ME came directly from the OEM so that
number isn't helpful.

Please help!

 

[Xandros]

the first question I have is why is the path referring to drive letter "m" ?
Unless you have multiple drives or partitions the drive letter shouldn't be
that high. Do you have a printer or some type of card reader installed? The
XP Upgrade disk is likely looking for the location of a file in a place
where it is not. Make certain you unplug any peripherals before you attempt
an upgrade. You need to ensure that the drive letter for the CD-Rom device
you have the Upgrade disk in is drive letter D (unless you have multiple
partitions)

Have you tried running the upgrade by booting the computer with the XP
Upgrade CD rather than trying to upgrade once Windows Me is running? You
might have a lot more success that way. Just boot the computer with the XP
CD and select the option to Install Windows. After the License Agreement you
should see an options screen. One option will be to Upgrade. Select that
option. The XP CD should search your Windows Me setup and locate the file(s)
it needs and then begin the upgrade.

 

[PA Bear]

If you must make identical posts to multiple newsgroups, please cross-post
one (1) message to all of them. Thank you.

Multiposting vs Crossposting:
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm

 

[David B.]

Unlike other poorly coded installers, I have found the XP upgrade to have
zero problems with CD drive letters, it is very unlikely that this is
causing the problem. And as the error path states, it is in fact looking at
the proper drive, assuming his CD drive letter is M.

 

[David B.]

The Microsoft KB on the subject indicates your CD drive is having trouble
reading the disk, which is usually the problem when encountering file errors
during XP setup.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315324

 

[Guest]

That's what I thought but I then copied the entire disk to the hard drive. I
still receive the same error when I do that (but now it refers to c:\i386\..

Also -- I did try to just do an install. The system boots, indicates that
it is copying over the files then it freezes when the system indicates
"Starting windows" at the bottom with on a blue screen with a couple cursors
at the top.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

 

[David B.]

File copy errors can also indicate a problem with system memory or the hard
drive.
Run diagnostics on each and report back.
To test the memory use Memtest http://www.memtest.org/#downiso
For the hard drive diags, visit the website of your drive mfg and download
their diagnostic utility.
The problems you are encountering indicate a good possibility of a hardware
failure or problem somewhere. XP seems to be more finicky when it comes to
system RAM than Windows 9X, I have had more than one 9X machine actually
have a bad memory module in it that wasn't noticed until the user tried to
upgrade to XP.