Trying to upgrade Windows 98SE to XP, but no luck

Hologram

Yes, the CD has a golden color, and is full of holograms. On it are printed, "Upgrade" , "Do Not Make Illegal Copies of This Disc ", "Includes Service Pack 2 ",
"Version 2002 ", "This program will search your system to confirm your eligibility for this upgrade edition ", "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition ". It looks authentic to me.

 

as i stated earlier, upgrade is good, you will just need to show xp an OS cd for an os that has an upgrade path to xp. does the cd have the full hollagram or what ?

 

you got the real deal , and you get the errors
have you run memtest86 or DL HD test tools from the manufacture of your hd
try another cd rom drive ?
http://www.memtest86.com/
...
...

 

Tests

I downloaded Microsoft's "Windows Memory Diagnostic" program early in this struggle, and it didn't find any memory errors. I'll look at memtest86 and will try my other CD drive (it is also a CD burner).

 

Memory test; disc source

I downloaded Memtest89, version 3.2 and ran it. It did one pass and found no memory errors and I quit the program after it began a second pass.

As for whether the disc is a genuine Microsoft Windows XP disc, I can't be certain, but everything about it, from the folder it is contained in, to the Product Key sticker to the appearance of the disc itself, looks genuine to me. There are no other programs on the disc besides XP as far as I can determine.

We have visitors tomorrow and the day after (Thursday and Friday) and I probably won't be able to do any more on the effort to upgrade until Saturday. Meanwhile, thanks, all, for the responses and suggestions!

 

If the cd has the full hollagram across the whole cd it is the real thing

 

Hi Viking,

Sure, and one can make a partition as large as wanted.

The 10 gig size is about this particular situation.

Regards - Charles

 

Charles how do you get an Avatar, looks like you have to be a mod or admin type ?

 

Hi Viking,

Or a Subscribing Member http://www.windowsbbs.com/faq.php?faq=vb_user_maintain#faq_vb_avatar_how

Regards - Charles

 

Another dead-end

Well, I'm back at the attempt to setup Windows XP as an upgrade from Windows 98SE.

Today I tried a technique which was successful for someone else who had my exact problem (couldn't upgrade, kept getting the file error message about ohci1394.sys being corrupted) but was able to go to Microsoft's site and download a program that uses six floppy disks to begin the setup, and then go to the XP CD-ROM and continue the process and setup XP.

I downloaded the Microsoft program onto six floppies and booted with the first disk in the floppy drive. All went well through the sixth disk, and then I was directed to load the XP CD-ROM. I did that, and I believe the C:\ drive got formatted (again!) and then things seemed to be rolling along very smoothly until I got a file error message, "Setup cannot copy the file olecli32.dll ". I chose to skip that file, but soon after got the same kind of message about file "olecnv32.dll ".

At that point I threw in the towel on this approach. Of course I have had to re-install Windows 98SE, other programs and drivers to get to the point where I could connect to the Internet and post this wail.

I don't know what to do now, as if I ever did.

 

And one more

Just finished trying to use the other CD drive on this computer to setup XP and it ended in failure, too, with the message: "An error occurred copying file oembios.bin to C:\$WIN_NT$.~LS\1386\oembios.bi_ "

 

Cd?

Well, I suppose it could be the Upgrade to XP CD which is at fault, but before going through the hassle of buying another one, I'd like to rule-out other causes.

Earlier today I was able to successfully update the BIOS on this computer from Gateway's site, and once again tried to install XP. Then I got the message, "An error occurred copying file oe_msgr.chm to C:\$WIN_NT$.~LS\1386\oe_msgr.ch_. The system cannot read from the specified device. "

Maybe this is a hint of what is happening, and maybe it is telling me the CD is at fault.

 

Hi Tom,

Another possibilty, the inability of the old Gateways to run SP2.

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?p=304275#post304275

Yours is a Gateway as old if not older than the one in that thead and it struck me since the XP you're trying to install has SP2 integrated in it.

Regards - Charles

 

Uhhh.

Charlesvar, thanks for the response, and I hope you'll forgive me when I say the picture that came into my head after I read your response and then looked at the article on slipstreaming SP2 and XP, was of the old chicken farmer in the movie, Napoleon Dynamite, who said "I didn't understand a single word you just said. "

I thought the XP Upgrade CD was (unsuccessfully) installing both XP and SP2, and maybe you are saying that might not be a good idea. Or, on the other hand, maybe you are saying that might be a good idea.

By this time you probably have begun to suspect that I am not a computer guru!

 

Hi Tom,

I suggested slip streaming before I got the response from Cal about the chip problem.

Cal being experienced, may try my suggestion, but if it is a matter of SP2 problems being caused by hardware, I doubt it would do any good.

I would suggest you PM CAL and ask him to look at your thread, he may have insights using an old Gateway machine, and may know better questions to ask.

Regards - Charles

 

Will do

Charles, I'll contact CAL directly, as you suggest, and see what he thinks of my situation. Many thanks.

 

Disk problem, maybe

I contacted Cal, who didn't think his problem applied to me.

Further developments indicate that Arie was on the right track in suggesting I try another XP CD. It appears that my XP disk is damaged.

After Cal's reply, I started Googling again and eventually found a Microsoft support site page on troubleshooting XP setup,

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q310064

and the part under "You receive a file copy error while the Setup program is running" reads like my problem. I followed the advice given and copied the XP CD's i386 folder to a new folder, C:\i386 on my computer. However there were some 21 files that could not be copied, and many of them had names that were mentioned in file errors during my attempts to setup.

So, I got another XP Home Edition with SP2 CD and tried copying the same files to my hard drive, and was successful in copying all of them!

Now I have to study the Microsoft page cited above and run the Setup program from my hard disk. The procedure seems to be explained in the XP CD "Step by Step: Setting Up Microsoft Windows XP" under "Perform other Setup=related tasks/How do I install Windows from the command prompt? "

There it says to start the computer with Windows 98 "and then run Winnt.exe from the i386 folder of your Windows XP CD." Since this seems to presume I have an undamaged XP CD, it looks like I use the DOS prompt and thenn use my C: drive's i386 folder and the "winnt" command.

 

Good news Tom

Troubleshooting is about narrowing the possibilties down.

I know you're gun shy and tired of formating C, but now that you know the CD works, you can just use it do a clean install.

Arie's article on installing XP - both as an upgrade and clean.
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/setup.html

Regards - Charles