How to upgrade to XP from Win98SE? driver problems?

[millhouselives]

Hi,

I have a home-built computer that has win98se installed on it. I have a Asus a7n8x mb, a amd athelon 1600 processor 1050mhz, a radeon 7000 agp board, a nec multisync FE791sb monitor. I have tried once to upgrade to XP pro all seemed to go well, until the reboot stage at which point the computer went into some kind of constant loop (i now know that I had some incorrect drivers for video,audio etc.

I have on-board Nvidia mcp networking adapter, along with nvidia nforce sound and audio codec interface.

I now have all of the XP drivers I need for all of the above mentioned, but what I need to know is this? If I try the upgrade again..and the computer goes into the looping how am I going to get the drivers loaded. Is it possible to load the XP driver prior (I am running win98se) to doing the upgrade..in other words will the XP drivers work under win98? I am thinking that if the drivers are alreadly loaded under win98 and then I try the upgrade XP will find them and it may avoid any problems? any ideas?

thanks for any help

 

[braddds]

Personally I wouldn't install XP drivers in Win9X...that'll give you all sorts of problems. I would uninstall the problem drivers and set them to a generic driver prior to upgrade. Then when Xp was up and running I'd install the correct drivers you've downloaded!

Cheers

 

[paparazi]

Athlon XP1600+ is a 1400mhz CPU not 1050 (you must have your front side bus set at default 100 instead of 133 that it should be (requires adjustment in the bios) press delete on initial boot to enter and adjust FSB setting.
Personally I wouldn't upgrade, I would set first boot device to CDrom in the bios and boot from XP and carry out a NTFS format and clean install (otherwise you will end up running XP on a FAT 32 file system)
Bad memory can often cause boot loops!
Install motherboard drivers FIRST after a clean install followed by VGA and sound etc etc
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[braddds]

paparazi

I agree, the upgrade path isn't the way to go but if it goes well, then one can save alot of time re-installing apps. I've not had any luck with the upgrade from win98se to XP Pro...I did do it to a win98 to W2K without incident.

Also, can't you convert the existing FAT32 to NTFS using the "convert.exe" from the run menu? Are there some problem(s) with the conversion technique? Just curious...always wanting to learn!

Cheers

 

[jchapman1964]

I will add my agreement to the list... don't bother upgrading, yer asking for trouble.

 

[linney]

braddds,

Only down side using Convert after an upgrade is you lose the ability (should you require it) to uninstall XP and return to your Windows 98 version pre XP condition.

 

[millhouselives]

Well, thank you all..it looks like the way to go is to do a fresh install formatting with ntfs..and then just re-install my applications. thanks for all the response!

Happy 4th of July