XP Full vs. Upgrade

I am interested in upgrading my system to XP Professional (currently running Windows 98SE). According to Microsoft, I would be eligible for the upgrade version. My preference would be to do a clean installation (after reformatting the drive). If I do this, can I actually use the XP upgrade CD for installation? Or, does it require there to be Windows 98 files present on the drive at the time of installation?

Kent Kester

 

Set your Bios to boot from your CD drive and boot from the Win XP CD... or if you can't , boot to an A:\ prompt, go to your CD drive letter and run Setup.Exe and it will run the XP install.

Win XP setup will start and will tell you to put in your Win 98 ME CD to verify that it is a legal upgrade and then the XP install will continue... just keep your Win 98 ME disk in a safe place because you'll always need it if you want to reinstall Win XP again.

 

What Harold is saying, is that you can do a clean install with the upgrade CD.
Do your fdisk/format as you please, then boot to the Upgrade XP CD.
You will be prompted to insert the Win98CD part way through the install, just to prove that you own a qualifying product.

 

If I remember correctly, it was possible to do a clean install from Windows 98 to ME using the ME CD, but this was not possible with XP.

XP required an existing copy of 98 to be present.

As I said, "If I remember correctly ", and I have an excellent memory, but it is extremely short.

Hope this is not a "bum steer ".

 

XP Pro Upgrade CD will allow a clean install. I have done it twice. You just need the 98 CD as proof of a previous version.

The one ( and only one as far as I know ) version of Windows that did need 98 to be installed first was 98SE UPDATE

And my experience with it was that once you did get the UPDATE installed it had to re-installed ( if needed ) from with in Windows.

BillyBob