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Replace Windows XP with Win 98 SE?

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by jklein 1 view

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Has anyone reimaged a XP machine with Win 98SE and suffered any ill effects. Are there issues with the FAT, Formating/FDisk or other boot issues?

4 replies

by gshollingsworth

If you were planning on Formatting/FDisk (use FDisk before formatting, it works better), then you are not planning on saving any data still on the drive. I am assuming you already backed-up your data. I have not done a WinXP to anything replacement,but the following method will work for any OS change. Use a utility to overwrite the drive. I use the zero fill tool in Ontrack's Disk Manager v.9.45 (it came with a hard drive), I think EZ-Drive or MAX-Blast also have an overwrite function. You only need to overwrite sector zero since this contains the MBR and the partition table. I then partition and format the drive as I need it. I use DiskManager, Partition Magic, or Partition Commander instead of Fdisk/format, they do both steps and formatmuch faster. Careful when using DiskManager, MAX-Blast, or EZ-Drive, some versions of some of these utilities automatically installed their BIOS extender for Larger drive support even if not needed. If you are running WinXP your system probably doesn't need it even for Win98SE and it can hurt performance. Make sure a partition is marked active/bootable and the system boot files are copied (command= "sys c:" or "format c: /s" if using fdisk/format method)

by sjames2k

J.K., I took part in the WindowsXP preview program and ran it for about 5 months and at the end of the preview period I fdisked my hard drive, formatted and installed Windows98 SE with no problems. What I would reccommend is to boot from a 98SE bootdisk and fdisk & format your drive from there. Format it whatever you want, be it FAT16 or FAT32 but I would suggest formatting to FAT32 and breaking your drive into two partitions.

by mrafrohead

Here's my experience with XP...

I used Windoze 2000 before I upgraded. Before I upgraded to XP I made an image of my Windoze 2000 install. Just in case I didn't like XP.

Well XP turned out to be crap, it lived for two short days on my computer before I removed it. When I installed XP I did a fresh install and used the format option during install to format my hard drive to NTFS, which it was when I used Windoze 2000.

The funny thing is this, when I attempted to restore my image which was NTFS to overwrite XP which was NTFS, my NTFS file system ( I know it sounds redundant ) was corrupt. I actually had to reinstall windoze 2000 with a fresh install and reformat the drive with NTFS AGAIN!!!

So if I was you, I would wipe your drives nice and clean to remove all of the crap that XP left on your system. Including a more than likely corrupt file system.

Just my two cents.

mrafrohead
@yahoo.com

by electronx

Agreed, Reformat, by whatever means. XP sucks and leaves a mess. I have tried it with FAT32, and same story, wheather going back to 98SE or ME. You can always upgrade in a year or so when they get the driver support up and work out the bugs without reformating again. XP will do it automatically, GOOD LUCK, and welcome to the XP X's.

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