Installing 98SE over 98

[airborne_artist]

I've an old laptop with 98. The USB wifi adaptors I have only support 98SE and above. I have a 98SE installation CD, but the laptop won't allow me to use it to install it with 98 already installed, and it asks me to put in an upgrade disc.

I have read that by deleting a few key files I can fool the laptop into allowing me to install 98SE - does anyone have advice/experience on this?

[Conan the Librarian]

There is a downloadable file which allows USB on Win 98std. I had it sent to me on a floppy from Dell when I purchased my old Pentium 2. Will try to locate it for you. Although it is years old, it struck me as something of a curio even then, being on a floppy and I am fairly confident that I will have just shoved it into a box of disks and saved it somewhere.

In the interim, if anyone else remembers this utility or what it was called, post here so that AA can get up and running pronto

Conan

[Mac the Knife]

http://www.usb-drivers.com/drivers/9/9911.htm

Login: drivers
Password: all

Ignore all the hints, appeals and ads, just click on thru and you get to it.

[Saab Dastard]

AA,

There's a file in the WIN98 directory on the Windows 98SE CD called Setup.txt, and in that file (toward the end) is the following:

Message SU0168
Your computer already has an operating system installed,
which cannot be upgraded by this version of Setup. Please
obtain the Windows 95 (or Windows 98) Upgrade.

This error can occur when you are attmpting to install an
OEM version of Windows 98 over a previous version of Windows.
-or-
An application has installed an OEM version of SetupX.dll
that makes it appear that your current version of Windows is
the OEM version.

If you suspect this is the case, replace SetupX.dll with the
correct version from your current install media.

1. Place your Windows 95 or Windows 98 CD in your CD-ROM
drive.
2. From a command prompt, change to your CD-ROM drive letter.
3. Type "Extract /a base4.cab SetupX.dll /l c_:_ \" (nb underscores added to avoid smileys)
4. Copy the SetupX.dll from your C: to your Windows\System
directory.
5. Run Windows 98 Second Edition Setup again.

Sounds like your problem!

Although if you could get hold of Win 2K (and have > 128 MB RAM) that is what I would recommend - I have an elderly Toshiba 480CDT (Pentium 2, 233 MHz) that is still happily running Win 2K much better than it ever ran Win 95!

[DBTL]

The solution is simple. Delete or rename the file win.com in your Windows directory, typically c\windows . Thereafter any CD version will work as an upgrade, you need to specify \windows instead of \windows.000 as the installation directory at some point during the installation. Network-related stuff really requires the SE, a USB patch alone is not enough.

[frostbite]

I don't think W2000 would be regarded by many as an improvement over W98, especially W98SE.

[Mac the Knife]

Originally Posted by frostbite

I don't think W2000 would be regarded by many as an improvement over W98, especially W98SE.

You're not serious? Win2000 is XP without the eye-candy. Far better than 98SE, which was a big improvement on 98.

(Thinks: Why am I defending Microsoft?)

[Saab Dastard]

(Thinks: Why am I defending Microsoft?)

LOL!

Perhaps because you are a fair-minded individual who gives credit where credit is due? Or should that be "less debit" where "less debit" is due?

As a matter of fact, I suggested Win2K rather than XP because the former requires less RAM and "grunt" to work reasonably well on older systems. If you have a Pentium 400 + with min 256MB RAM, then by all means use XP. Any less and my experience is that 2K is actually a bit better. There are also chipset drivers and BIOS issues with some older systems that the manfrs (not unreasonably) haven't addressed for XP.