Down-grading XP to Windows 98

Tech Support Forum Windows OS's
1

…okay, hopefully in the right forum.

Here’s the set up.

I have a really old PC with XP installed.

My brother is going to have this old PC, but he prefers the older games and these tend not to work on XP. So, I said that I’d put Windows 98 on it for him and format the drive, as we have a hell of a lot of crap on the PC. Viruses that don’t go, corrupt .DLL’s, registry links, spyware…

I know that you can’t simply insert the windows 98 cd and install 98 over xp, and I know that you can’t format a drive whilst in windows. How do I go about formatting everything off of the disk, and then reinstalling 98?

Thanks.

2

Before you do that, check out NTCompatible.

Failing that, you will need a Win98 startup floppy disk. This is required to setup 98, and it should contain FDISK and FORMAT so you can wipe the hard drive completely and format it.

3

okies, so i’m gonna need that start up disk. I presume I can find it on the net, somewhere?

And I’m also gonna need a Windows 98 installation CD, ya.

So boot up with the floppy in it, run FDISK and FORMAT, and then install 98 from there onwards. Right? I hope so, because I understand that.

Thanks.

4

I did this recently for someone on the laptop!

Use the XP CD, go though the install process, when you get the screen where you can select where you want to install XP, you should be able to format to FAT32! then restart with the Win98 CD!

then again the startup disk method would be, somewhat easier!

5

[QUOTE=Waffle]
okies, so i’m gonna need that start up disk. I presume I can find it on the net, somewhere?

And I’m also gonna need a Windows 98 installation CD, ya.

So boot up with the floppy in it, run FDISK and FORMAT, and then install 98 from there onwards. Right? I hope so, because I understand that.

Thanks.
[/QUOTE]

Bootdisk.com.

Even if you do format it under Win XP, you still will need the boot disk to start the install process.

6

are you sure Big B? as I did it without a boot disk? (floppy?)

Edit: I think it might be because it was Win98 SE, it allowed me to boot with cd-rom support, so I could run the setup program!

7

Maybe. I haven’t used 98 in years, and when I did, they were the upgrade versions, so that could’ve come into play. Still, it’s not going to hurt to have it on hand.