Win98SE -> Win2k Upgrade gone haywire?!

[bergie007]

My dad brought his office machine home for the holidays and wanted to road test Win2k on it till end of Jan. One of my friends made me a copy of his Win2k OEM edition (the one without a CD key needed) since we would be backing up at begin of Jan and re-formatting before installing a legal version of Win2k. I started the install fine but first time I said 'upgrade to 2k' the process went fine but gave errors bout corrupt files. I the copied the I386 folder to the C: drive (with 98 still working, did the copy in 98) and started the whole thing from there. The first thing I saw (and I could kick myself for not stopping right there) was that 3 files (comsetup.dl_ , comrereg.dl_ and driver.cab) could not be copied so I took my Win2K Server CD and copied the files from there. I then started the upgrade all fine and dandy. The pc rebooted and and the blue setup screen came on, all fine , disk check OK, deleting existing Windows install, copying files, hang and says the first file - _default.pif - is corrupt. Do it a few times (remember, no more Win98 availible) and try F3 to skip - no help, all the files are corrupt.

Now, I have a major problem in that while there is a backup, it dates back to early November (just before dad's holiday started) and he's done quite a bit of work on the machine since then, most of it essential for the end of finacial year and next years budgets. What do I do know? Is it possible to re-install 98 and keep all the programs etc ( I made a Outlook backup just in case so I don't mind losing that but I NEED the rest, incl some of the programs) or can I complete/repair the Win2k install to a working state somehow???

ANY help welcome as I AM DESPERATE!!!

:confused: :confused:

[turd]

u are up against a wall here( which, by the way i am not advocating what u are doing which is not according to license but i will offer my advice about your system), you could try to boot to your copy of 2k and do a repair instal, or better still use the actual 2kOEm original and try that, or you could try reinstalling 98 over everything, you coulod put in a new HD,instal fresh 2k, make it master, slave your bad instal to it and and get your data out. either way u may get back all your stuff, but i doubt u are going to get back the same stable comp u started with, I have yet to get a bug free update with 2k, usually i go right for the format/fresh instal

[minoukat]

if you wanna backup your files, take the drive out, and put it in your comp, then copy all the files you or your dad need. Then format and reinstall. Maybe you could do a repair install with a working copy of Win2k, but I'm not sure about this.

[dugans]

The best bet is definitely to put the drive in another pc and recover the data! A pain, but with crucial data........

I also second a clean install is the way to go: upgrades have never given me a clean Microsoft os; dual boots are fine because they do not interfere with either oses system files, but upgarding directly is asking for trouble in my book.

Good luck with the data recovery!

[Bmxpunk86pl]

Make sure your cd isint scrached. If you get .bin files then its the cd.

[bergie007]

I know what I did was illegal but I thought that since I would be getting 4 licenses from the company in Jan, it would be sortof ok to road test 2k till then.

Thanks for the answers anyway, but anyone know if I reinstall 98 over it if I will keep settings, programs and the My Documents folder with all in it? Cos thats where most of the data is stored. Will the reinstall not clear everything??

[turd]

Well if u converted to NTFS during your upgrade u are screwed, 98 wont even see what u now have, but, if not there is a very good chance that a reinstall of 98 will let u see everything that is on the disk,but really i dont know for sure, depends whats up, whats wrong?? . clear everything?, no i doubt if u will ever have exactly the same system, at best u will see some minor program bugs that may or may not go away when you begin reinstalling individual programs. but again u are risking your data with anything u do from this point , u really should slave that drive up to another and pull what u need off