How painful (or painless) is upgrading to Win2k from Win98?

TegSkywalker

Member
Sep 7, 2000
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What's up guys? I currently have Windows 98 Second Edition installed on my home computer and am pondering the thought of upgrading to Windows 2000 in the next few days because I finally got the Win2k CD. I noticed when you enter the CD, it autoruns and asks if you would like to upgrade or do a full clean install.

If I do an upgrade and let the Setup do its work, will all of my old settings and directories be transferred over easilly? Thanks!

 

Elledan

Banned
Jul 24, 2000
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It's always better to do a clean install, but if you really want to preserve your settings, it's very simple: sometimes it works flawlessly, sometimes partly and else it just craps out on you, leaving you no other choice than to do a clean install.

I hope that didn't scare you off :)
 

sykopath79

Senior member
Nov 2, 2000
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It's pretty painless even if you decide to upgrade rather than clean install. Here's some suggestions that will make it a lot easier for you to just upgrade:

-Make sure you have any Win2k compatible drivers you'll need for your hardware downloaded and extracted BEFORE you run Win2k setup

-For hardware that will need Win2k-specific drivers, go into your Win98 device manager and remove the hardware from the list before installing 2k - this will force Win2k to auto-detect new hardware and let you choose the proper drivers, giving you a clean driver install without tripping over leftover Win98 drivers

-Set your video display to 640x480, 8-bit color, and reboot, forcing the generic Windows VGA driver which will ease any video issues once in Win2k

-If you have Logitech Mouseware installed, remove it beforehand, otherwise you won't get Mouseware to work in Win2k later

-Let Setup convert your C: drive to NTFS, this is painless, quick, and leaves all your files intact

Follow these steps and you should have a smooth ride.
 

ugh

Platinum Member
Feb 6, 2000
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Better still, if possible, install Win2k in another partition on your hard disk as clean install while keeping your Win98 installation. That way, you can try out Win2k first before wiping out your Win98.
 

Hecky

Banned
Dec 15, 2000
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I agree with ugh. If you have the disk space, when Win2K asks you, choose new install and it will create a dual-boot OS option for you. When you start up, you'll have the choice of booting Win98 or into Win2K. This will give you a known working environment while you debug/upgrade hardware/get drivers for Win2K. 2K is often picky about what it runs on, especially NICs. When you get Win2K working the way you like it...and you will...you can either keep Win98 for nostalgia value, or delete it and regain the disk space.