erasing entire hd and installing xp

[Mr. CPU]

hey all,
ive got my familys old pc in my room at the moment. its three years old and the specs are as follows: 600mhz p3 katmai, 312mb ram, 10.2gb hd, sony external cdrw, internal floppy, all sittin on an intel tabor III mobo (yes this is a store bought gateway to be exact). Well anyways it currently has windows 98se on it and it has gotten unbarrabley slow. Therefore, I would like to increase the speed of it by erasing the entire hd which is almost full, and putting windows xp on it instead. so just how would i go about erasing the entire hd and putting windows xp on it? Ive got the disc from our new pc that says on it "for pcs without windows" but then it gives some crap about it being only for new pc's without windows and only for magnell associates pcs, so although it gives all that crap, would it still give me an install of windows xp? if this isnt the right stuff, how could i just get 98 se back on it?
thanks
andy

[Tazman]

Andy -

You aren't talking about an easy task .

To format a computer is gonna take awhile, I'll get ya started and, if I have time, help with the rest. If not, other members wil pick up where I leave off I'm sure.

Before I begin, there are a few things to concider. Do you have all of the drivers - modem, nic, soundcard, video, chipset, etc.? If not, download them first.

Another thing to point out. Once you format, all is gone. You won't be able to just to put 98SE back on. You would have to do the same as installing XP listed below (substituting 98 for XP).

Finally, the XP install disk you are refering to better not be installed on another pc. If you didn't buy it specifically for this endevor, stop right here. If you have the original 98 install disk, my suggestion would be to reinstall 98 instead of XP.
___________________________________________

First, backup all your data. Some things over looked in backing up are the Favorites folder, OE store folder, blocked senders list, ect.

In Win98, make a boot disk (Settings - Control Panel - Add / Remove Programs, Startup Disk). Or head over to www.bootdisk.com and grab one there. When done, leave the floppy in the drive and reboot.

When it boots to the floppy and you are at the A prompt, type in "format c:\" (without the quotes), hit enter, hit "y" (again, without the quotes) when prompted.

After the drive is formatted, you will be prompted to label the volume (I just hit enter).

Remove the floppy and place the XP install disk in the CD drive. Do a ctrl-alt-delete to reboot to the XP disk. Hit a key on the keyboard if prompted to boot from the CD.

Follow the instructions though the installation of XP. When you get to the point of what partition to install it on and prompted to format as NTFS, I suggest to choose NTFS.

That should get you started . Remember, if you do format - all is lost. There are ways to recover data but not in the realm of this thread to cover (at the moment).

Good luck!

Mike

[Zenara25]

If you know your computer can boot from a cd continue to the next paragraph below otherwise skip the next paragraph temporarily and read about the bios boot setup.

If you buy the Windows XP CD put it in your cdrom drive. It will boot up and let you either upgrade (I believe it will work with 98se) or erase the hard drive partition (you probably just have one partition on your 10gb drive) and then install XP.

First make sure that your computer bios is set up to allow booting from the CD drive. I think you press the delete or the F1 key near the beginning of bootup. It will probably show which key to press during bootup. Anyway I just keep pressing it (delete or F1) until the bios appears. You need to look for a section that allows you to change your boot order. Such as floppy first, cdrom second, HD-0 third. It's usually is in the 2nd page of the bios. You usually use the arrow keys, enter, and to make changes (page up, page down). Make sure you save that by pressing whatever your bios says. (Such as press F10 to save)

Now try out the Windows XP CD

[Zenara25]

If you already have windows xp on another computer and you want to use the same cd to install you can't unless you buy a coa. That's the Certificate of Authenticity. It gives you those letters and numbers you type in when you install XP. You can search for it at www.pricewatch.com . The last time I looked it was about $58. Which is cheaper than $90 for Windows XP CD. Buying a COA is a good idea to save $30 when you have more than 1 computer in the same household.

[dustyrun]

Mr. CPU

Try these sites for Win98 and XP

Windows 98

Windows XP

Might help.

Rick

[draboo]

if the machine is slow,i dont believei it has anything to do with the o.s. win 98 is still a good preforming os.

sounds to me like you need to do some maintainance on the hard drive on that machine,like scandisk and defrag.

also,you mentioned wiping out the data on the h.d and reformating. you wouldnt have to do this if you bought an win xp upgrade disk.

[dunbar]

Or maybe just blow away all of the stuff on it, run fdisk /mbr, reformat the drive and reinstall 98SE? That alone can make things go a lot faster.