Removing WinME - replacing with 98SE

[rosso]

Hello.

I have inherited a very old PII 450Mhz machine that is running WinME. Unfortunatley, it doesnt appear to be very stable - despite running scandisk/virus/adaware checks the thing just completely falls over and locks up for no reason at various times.

I have an old copy of Win98SE I would like to install and remove WinME, to see if this improves stability. However - for some reason I cannot create a startup disk in order to boot Windows from A: drive. I just keeps asking me to put the disk in the drive - which is where it is, of course. So that sounds like a floppy problem.

Anyway, whats the easiest way to get WinME off, and Win98SE on? I dont care about losing data/programs - I can replace all that easily.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[acidosmosis]

The way I used to do it is, you could use the WinME CD for example to boot to DOS (To do so, place the CD in the drive. At startup press F5 or F8 (I can't remember which) until you get several options. You can use your ME CD as a DOS boot disk.

You can do a "Deltree C:\Windows" to remove the Windows directory and subdirectorys, or Format C: to format the entire drive. (You may have to look for the deltree file on the ME CD).

Anyway, from there you can place the 98SE CD in the drive and run SETUP.EXE.

That is the way I used to do it years ago.

(I assume you know a little about DOS, if not let me know and I'll give you better directions).

 

[poertner_1274]

The power supply to the floppy might be backwards. I have had this happen to me that it kept asking for a disk when there was one in there. Investigated and saw the power was backwards, changed and all worked well. Also just make sure that in your BIOS you have boot from floppy as 1st boot device.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:

 

[LPent]

If it is indeed an old PII I doubt you will be able to boot from CD. Try downloading a bootdisk (image) from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and see if the problem with the floppy remains. If so It may indeed be a hardware problem.
The best way to go about installing windows 98 in that case is to startup the computer in dos-prompt (F8 safe mode dos prompt only) and insert the cd for win98. From there you can simply use deltree on the windows and program files folders and then execute the setup.exe on the cd.