Windows Install gone bad!!

Are you at least able to get into safe mode? If so, you should be able to go to the control panel, to add/remove programs, and uninstall 98 from there (if I remember correctly -- it's been awhile).

If not, you can try (this is a definite long shot) booting from a disk and reinstalling 95.

Barring that, I think you might have to strip and start over. If you have backups of the data you need (you could always use Norton Ghost to make yet another backup -- it runs off a boot disk just fine), this is a solid option.

If you format the drive and start over, you can install from the Windows 98 upgrade CD. When you reach a certain point, it will simply ask you to put in your Windows 95 disk or CD-ROM to verify the license, then ask you to swap them back and merrily install '98.

You'll end up with a much more stable Win98 this way. I remember hearing several nightmares of 95 to 98 upgrades, and I keep hearing 98 to ME nightmares, too. But again, I suppose if you don't have backups, this is an "if all else fails" move.

Good luck.

The wrong move may cause you to lose your data so be careful. I would try to reinstall Win 98 again. If that didn't work I would boot the computer with a Win 98 boot disk, hook a zip drive up to it and copy my data to it. Next, I would delete theWindows directory and attempt the reinstall once again. After you have deleted the Windows directory you can optionally go back to Win 95. I suspect that your registry is now too corrupt to be of much good and you'll likely have to reinstall your programs. The reinstall will probably be fine once the registry is deleted. Hope this helps.

Seems that you are stuck between install,whereas most of Win98 install files have overwritten the 95 files,there is not a way to reverse the process,the only option I can think of is to use FDISK toi wipe drive clean and start over.

Format the hard disk. Then use the boot disk to boot into DOS. Use the windows 98 installation CD to install the OS. Nothing bad should happen next.

Good Luck to you,
Maozy

I would try the upgrade again, if works then use the revert back option. There are some flags that can be used during the upgrade that may help you. Will look them up is you like.

Yes, there's a way to get back Windows 95 on your hard disk, but it is a big piece of a trouble because of the following reasons:

1) You only have the system files, and a boot disk. The best you could do (usually) is to start a system from the boot disk and try to recover the rest of your existed installation. From your explanation I concluded that you tried that and failed.

2) The Win98 started the installation process which lead to malfunction. This usually means that there's a number of corrupted files and misconfigurated pieces instead of your WINDOWS folder. Actually, this is the main your problem and I'll explain why:

It is not enough to have only system files and a boot disk. Because having those you'll be able to only *start* the system up, not work with it properly. Graphical interface files and all the programs and libraries are all there, away from your floppy.

That's why your only two choices are windows 95 or 98, but in either case you will have to reinstall them from the ground up.

Since you rejected the offers to recover and set up Win98, I would offer you to install a copy of the Windows 95 OSR 2, as the most known stable version. To do so you just boout up from the floppy (or use a bootable CD, if available) and rename the rest of your windwos folder into something like "windows.old". Then you may go on with the installation of the operationg system itself.

After some time you will get back your win95 system up and running fine, and will bestill able to recover some config files (if needed) from the folder of the "old" windows. After you are sure everything you might need is copied and backuped, you may safely delete the windows.old folder.

To answer your actual questions: unfortunately, it is not possible to uninstall incomplete Windows 98 installation nor to recover the windows 95 installation from the non-gui command line interface you are entering into after your boot-disk starts up.

It can not be done because the new OS could have replaced some of the old system's files with their newer versions, which will make your old system feel very confused if you try to make work Windows 95 from the folder where the installation of the Windows 98 should have been installed to, but wasn't complete.

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