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Unable to upgrade to Win 2K / Win 98 SE

By eddiek ·
I am currently using Win 98. Months ago, i had installed Win 2000 in another drive. The drive crashed so i had formatted the drive leaving Win 98 in my boot drive (drive c). I intend to upgrade my current OS to Win 2000. I tried to do so but since my current situation is dual booting even though i had reformatted my second hard drive, i have managed to delete some files eg Boot.ini,ntldr,ntdetect.com and bootldr from C drive. Before deleting the files, i did make a Win 98 startup disk, boot from the disk and type "Sys c:" (from A prompt) to disable Windows boot loader so that only Win 98 will be loaded thereupon.
Everthing is okay and managed to get Windows bootup. When i pop in the Win 2000 Cd to upgrade my OS, i had this message :
"Windows 2000 setup could not detect the version of Windows you are currently running. Setup cannot continue".
I was unable to proceed from there. Since i could not upgrade, i thought maybe upgrade to Win 98 SE. However i encountered a different message saying
"Your computer already has an operating system installed, which cannot be upgraded by this version of setup. You need to obtain Windows 98 upgrade"
Can any one out there help me as i need to use some drivers which requires Win 98 SE or Win 2000

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by cool_apj In reply to Unable to upgrade to Win ...

you will need an Upgrade CD and not the OEM pack CD. The upgrade cd's are diff then the OEM pack CD.
If u dont need dual boot and need only win2000 then wat u can do is take the backup of ur system and reformat and load a fresh copy of Win2000. and then restore your data back.
And for the drivers if u can tell me wat drivers u need then i m sure i can help u with tht 2.
Windows 2000 has a good inbuilt drivers database.

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by eddiek In reply to

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by wcp In reply to Unable to upgrade to Win ...

In your case (why you cannot upgrade to Windows 2000), one explanation is that you do not have the Product ID (PID) in Windows 98. Your Windows 98 may be beta version or somehow, just does not have a product ID.

I had a few occasions that after I installed a Windows 98 OPK (OEM Preinstallation Kit), something triggered (for e.g. NIC installation) and Windows rebooted. Upon examination, the OPK status was gone and there was no product ID or no Product Key (because it was never put in). I had to start over to get the OPK status back.
Without the PID, you CANNOT upgrade Windows.

To check whether you have a PID or not, right click on My Computer icon and click on General tab. There, the PID should show.

If the PID does not show, you have two options to get a PID.

1. Backup your data and start from scratch. You have to reinstall all applications and copy back your data.
2. Put a legitimate PID in your current Windows. One way to do this is to clean install Windows in a different HD. After the successful installation, write down the PID and put it in the Registry of your current Windows. If this is a corporate environment, you can simply copy a PID from another computer (must be the same version of Windows).

Once your Windows got a PID, you can upgrade to Windows 2000.
Another option is to back up data and clean install Windows 2000.

For more information and help, please refer to the reference below.

Reference:

MS KB Article 220143 or http://tinyurl.com/4tuw3

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by eddiek In reply to

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by eddiek In reply to Unable to upgrade to Win ...

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