Upgrade Win98 to Win2k Pro

[dwadel]

I am doing an upgrade of Windows 98 to Window 2k Pro and during the "discovering devices" process it blue screens with a message "Hardware Malfunction". I have done many upgrades before without problem. I have removed all the unnecessary components such as Nic, modem, sound card with no luck. Anyone have any suggestions on either getting back to the 98 O/S as this is just the beginning of the process or correcting the problem.

It is a valid copy of the O/S.

Duane

 

[wolluf]

So you started upgrade from within win98? You can probably get back to 98 by reinstating its boot sector (boot from win98 boot floppy, save the msdos.sys file in root of c: somewhere else, type sys C: then restore saved version of msdos.sys. You'll probably have to attrib msdos.sys -s -h -r before doing all this), assuming its windows folder is still intact.

Do you need to upgrade? - clean installs generally produce a more stable system (ie, backup before, reinstall apps & replace data after). Also have you had any problems with the win98 system which might point to a hardware problem (freezing, rebooting, blue screens, frequent registry problems)? - which could be causing the win2k install fail (memory, cpu, mobo, graphics card can all be culprits).