xp evaluation disk of 98se or upgrade

Running win98se on a 733 hz 512m micron millenia with 30 gig avail 0n two hard drives.

Lost Win 98SE cd,s vendor micron has none to replace them.

Have problems with 98.

Also found a copy of xp release 1 of 180 day evaluation preview program software that was sent to me by MSFT but not used at the time as not enough Disk.

Think it will still function?

It says it can be upgraded to RC2 version Professional only.

Is there a way to load and run the experimental xp besides the existing win 98se?

Will appreciate comments

 

If you have a second drive... easy it should install and setup as a dual boot system. Don't believe MS have installed a time bomb that restricts the eval. disc being installed nearly 3 years after the official release? But would only attempt it if U really haven't used and looked at XP before as there have been about 100MB of updates since. Would strongly suggest if U do install it, you only use it to make a quick evaluation, and then promptly buy a copy if you approve. If you only have a single drive/partition then U will need a third party programme such as Partition Magic to repartition the disk and create another drive for the install of XP. Might be not much more expensive to buy a copy of XP and backup data files etc and repartition/format the existing drive though. The CPU is quite adequate for XP to run well and you have enough RAM. It will run faster than 98 properly configured.