Ok, I am running Win98. Bought the WinXP Pro upgrade, and cannot get it to run. It starts, checks my comp, begins installing new files, restarts my comp, and then I get a black screen…and nothing happens. I have tried diff video cards (supposedly my Geforce4 has issues while upgrading) and spent multiple hours on the phone with Microsoft Support. What gives?? Am I doomed to go purchase the full version?
My Comp easily exceeds the Sys Req, and I’m getting a headache and a big phone bill…Help
Are you trying to format and do a clean install (highly recommended) or are you attempting to install over Win98? There is only one difference between the upgrade version and the “full” version and that is that you need to have your Win98 inslall disks on hand to prove your ownership of a qualifying previous version of Windows.
Before installing
Pull all your add in cards except for video
Re-set motherboard BIOS setup options to factory defaults
If you have a pair of memory modules try pulling one before installing
Originally posted by Big Jeff
Are you trying to format and do a clean install (highly recommended) or are you attempting to install over Win98?
I have tried both, and both have given same result. Black screen upon restart.
Hi,
I’ve had the same problem. It was the combination of the videocard (Geforce4 chipset) and motherboard (KT133 chipset) that caused the problem.
I resolved it with replacing the Geforce4 with an older pci card. After installing windows, you can reinstall your Geforce4 card.
Be sure in BIOS to turn off ANY & ALL boot & virus protection schemes, otherwise it can’t write a new bios boot sector & that’s what happens.
Lesen, I have tried that as well. What a headache. The Geforce4 also will no longer run with my win98 for some reason. Handy, I haven’t had much experience in playing with BIOS. How do I accomplish that?
Pull out all your non-essential cards (sound, network, etc) as well as any USB devices like joysticks.
To answer your question to Handy in case he doesn’t come back, get into your BIOS (usually Del key a couple of seconds after your reboot) and look for the Anti-virus option. Sometimes also called Boot-Sector Protection. Make sure it is disabled.
Sorry I can’t be of more help, but without knowing what kind of motherboard/Bios you have there is too many options.
If nothing here fixes your problem, post your entire PC setup with make\model number of each part. We’ll get you going! 
I had a problem when I reinstalled my system. The drivers MS automatically installs for the GF4 DO NOT WORK! Or I got the same error you did, basically. If you can boot into safe mode, then do so, and install the NVIDIA drivers and it should work fine.
Ok, progress. After making sure virus off in BIOS, tried install again. This time, got to blue screen with “Windows Setup” at top. White bar at bottom. Says F6 to install third party RAID drivers ect… then goes to “Installing (Various files)” the says "Setup is starting windows. That’s where it stays…for a very long time (gave it 20min just to be safe). Nothing happens. Any more ideas?
BTW, thanx to everyone so far for all the help.
Also, I tried to disable all boots in BIOS, but then it got to a sys screen where @ the bottom it said “verify DMI pool data” then Insert System Disk and press enter. Any ideas? Tommorow, I will crack the case and post all the info I can find. BTW, it is not a store bought comp, I built it (my memory is just a lil fuzzy )
Argh, just as I was making progress, everyone lost interest in the thread it seems.
Well, if you disabled boot from hard drive, then it won’t boot from the hard drive. Put that setting back like it was. Other than that, I have no idea. Sorry.
I just saw this thread for the first time. Can you tell us what the model of your motherboard is? Or if it’s a pre-built system, what the make/model of the computer is? That would be very helpful in troubleshooting your problem.
As far as boot order goes, you should have the following set:
First Boot Device - CD-ROM
Second Boot Device - Primary IDE Drive (sometimes it just says Hard Disk Drive or First Hard Drive)
Third Boot Device - Floppy Disk Drive
Fourth Boot Device - None or Disabled
One question about your installation - you say you formatted your hard drive. Did you re-partition it as well? You would have run a utility called FDISK to do that.
One thing I would do is find out what kind of Hard Drive you have. Most drive manufacturers have a utility to do a low-level format of the drive (basically they write 0s to every bit on the drive). I would just do that and not re-partition the drive. During XP setup, select NTFS partition type. The setup will partition the drive and format it for you.
critter42
I wouldn’t low-level format a IDE drive. That may erase the drive data that identifies it.
But you’re right every HD manf I have bought from has a utility disk on their website.
The bios should have a ‘safe boot’ mode, one must use that. plus the board should come with a manual that explains what you need to do.
The “low-level format” I’m referring to is when the drive manuf. utility writes zeros to the drive, not the low-level formatting that used to require that the drive be kept at specific temperatures so the drive wasn’t ruined in the process :). Writing zeros to the drive is perfectly harmless as long as you’re using a utility that was specifically made for the drive. Now, I normally wouldn’t use one manuf.'s utility on a different brand of hard drive, tho… I’ve used these utilities many hundreds of drives over the years and not yet had one issue, unless the drive was already mechanically defective.
[hijack]
handy], what drive data are you referring to? I thought that all the necessary information to have the drive be recognizable to the BIOS, and usable by the system was now contained on CMOS on the drive’s electronics board itself?
[/hijack]
“utility writes zeros to the drive”
How long does that take you? Don’t those 120 gig HD’s take quite a bit of time critter?
Also, about the confusion with LLF:
"What does “low level formatting” an ATA (IDE) drive mean?
Actually the term “low level” is a bit of a misnomer. The low level process first used years ago in MFM hard drives bears little resemblance to what we now call a “low level format” for today’s ATA (IDE) drives. The only safe method of initializing all the data on a Seagate device is the Zero Fill option of DiscWizard."
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html
That’s exactly what I was referring to by Low-level format and writing zeroes to the drive. It does take a good bit of time, but I’ve never done it on drives over 40GB - I left Gateway right about the time those started coming out. It would generally take an hour or two, longer if the mobo didn’t have an Ultra ATA controller.
However, it was necessary in several cases; most notoriously on drives that had Gateway GoBack (it performed the same function as Windows ME/XP’s System Restore feature, and was actually the same thing as WildFire/Adaptec/Roxio’s program by the same name) installed. Occasionally, the partition table would get hosed, and since GoBack did some naughty tricks to hide its partition from FDISK or similar utilities, the only way to completly recover the system was to write zeroes to the drive (actually, it could also be accomplished using a Debug script to write zeroes only to the partition table, but it’s dicey walking a customer over the phone in doing that…one mistake and they really COULD render their system useless…) then repartition it.
critter42
Wow, lots of posts, have to check in more often. The boot problem has been taken care of ( figured that one out) and, like I said before, I can now get to a blue screen, has windows setup @ the top, runs through installing files, says setup is starting windows, and locks up. I have tried booting from the disk as well. all virus junk is off the comp, and am cracking open my tower as we speak to find the info…
MOBO–ABIT-KR7A-133r
AMD Athalon XP 1800+
90GB HD, can’t see info without removing (will post later, gotta shut down)
Win 98 OS
512mb RAM
any other info needed?
Nope, I think that’s enough. One question - you don’t have the system overclocked, do you? Easy enough to do in the BIOS for this board apparently, but I’m not an overclocker, so I can’t say for sure.
I looked back through the thread and didn’t see if you mentioned this or if someone suggested this - I would upgrade my BIOS to the most recent version. ABIT’s US website is http://www.abit-usa.com
critter42