[ale] OT: winxp upgrade version from scratch?

[David S. Jackson]

Thanks Jim and Greg!

On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 12:25:10AM -0500 Greg <runman at telocity.com> wrote:
> In the past (Win 2k pro upgrade), you boot off of the upgrade disk and it
> will ask you for the old (in my case Win 98) disk if it did not detect the
> old system. So... boot up with XP and insert a Win 98 disk when it asks for
> it.  

I guess since we have the XP here, I'll try installing with it and see
if it will install on a bare machine.  I'd like to take the system down
to bare metal on the HD, just because his system is so slow and full of
little inexplicable problems...

> What kind of Win 98 errors are you getting ?? I just fixed my Win 98  -
> it would not boot either, it having vxd errors.  However it was a dual boot
> so I just used the other system.  

For example, his IE suddenly refuses to fire up; it crashes within the
first few seconds and pops up a stick up to prompt you to send a bug
report in to M$.  You pretty much need the browser to configure his new
dsl router...unless there's a telnet interface, like there is on
mine...have to check that out.

There were other persistent problems, like "ndetect" saying it must
terminate now.  The Win98fe add/remove programs would hang indefinitely,
and trying to use the task manager would lock up the entire system.  I
tried to reinstall IE, but that process couldn't seem to complete
successfully.  I tried to reinstall the entire OS on top of itself
(win98fe still), but that process couldn't seem to progress beyond the
second stage before hanging.  It's a four year old installation, so it
seems to me to be behaving like Windows does after four years on the
same installation.  

He originally asked me to come over to help him set up his DSL, but he
had bigger problems.  I hate it when that happens!  :-)  

> You know, you could use another system to
> "operate" on the hosed disk if you don't want to reinstall.

Well, at this point, I just want to get *any* system working for him.
When you show up at a friends house expecting a simple router and
network config but discover a basket full of gremlins lurking in his
Windows installation instead, it tends to scale your expecatations back.
He's gotta wonder if there's something wrong with you, not just with the
machine.  I want to get his Windows stuff working, then I can see about
getting a Linux install on there too.  I think the "Fast Access DSL"
installation program clobbered a lot of files when he did something that
made it terminate prematurely before I got there.

-- 
David S. Jackson                        dsj at dsj.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Humorists always sit at the children's table.
		-- Woody Allen
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