Trying to put 98 on my computer to upgrade.

I have XP Pro and I am getting an error message saying I have activated it too many times. On the copy it says unlicensed software. What I want to do is put 98 on and use my legal XP Home upgrade, I tried to put 98 on but it had an error message and the computer kept beeping..did not catch the message. I just reinstalled XP Pro and have 30 days. I have a built Athalon 1.73 mgz with 1 meg of ram and a 80 gig HDD. To make matter worse Vista was installed before I bought it. It was reformatted before I got it...Any help would be appreciated....Greg

 

You don't need to install Win98 in order to use your XP Home upgrade disc, but you will need both the Windows XP disc and the Windows 98 disc. Here's what you do:

1. Be sure your BIOS is set to boot to the CD first, insert the XP Upgrade CD (I'll call it 'XPCD' from now one) and boot to it. You should see "Press any key to boot from CD..." on the screen and... yup... you guessed it.... you'll press any key. You'll then see "Setup is inspecting your computer hardware configuration...". If the hard drive is blank with no partition, you will not see the "Press any key..." prompt and it will go straight to "Setup is inspecting...."
2. The XPCD will go through some blue setup screens with white letters and a white bar at the bottom. Just let it go until you see a screen that says something close to: "Welcome to Windows XP setup. Press Enter to install; press R for the Recovery Console; press F3 to exit". At this screen, press Enter.
3. The XPCD will spin for a bit and you'll get a screen with the license agreement; press F8 as prompted at the bottom of the screen.
4. You'll then be shown a screen where the bottom portion will show your hard drive/partitions. I'll assume you have one partition and one hard drive and we'll call it drive C:. It should be highlighted. Press D to delete the partition. Anything on it will be permanently erased. Anything and everything; erased; gone; forever. Some people don't understand the gravity of what this means. It really does mean that EVERYTHING WILL BE COMPLETELY ERASED FOREVER. You will get some confirmation prompts, do what it says to erase the partition.
5. After the partition has been deleted, you'll again be at the screen that started step 4. Press Enter to select the drive we just erased. The next screen will give you some format options. Select 'Format NTFS (Quick)'. There is no need to do a slow format unless you're having some drive issues. The quick format works fine 9 times out of 10 (more like 96 times out of 100).
6. At some point between step 5 and step 7, you will get a prompt to insert a qualifying operating system. This means your Windows 98 disc must be inserted. So open the CD/DVD drive, remove your XPCD and put in the 98CD and close the drive and do what it says on screen. You will prompted to remove the 98CD when it's no longer needed and you'll put the XP CD back in.
7. From here it's easy. Press Enter when prompted; click Next a few times; enter your user name and product key when prompted, and that's about it.

Much helpful info can be found here if you get stuck http://www.windowsxphome.windowsreinstall.com/ but if you follow the steps I outlined above, you shouldn't have any troubles.

Good luck! I hope this helps!

:major
[dlb]

(BTW- you did mean 1 gig of RAM, right? Somehow I don't think 1meg would get you very far )

 

Got it done without 98 but it says I have exceded the number of activations for XP...the first time I have used this one...I bought the computer and software off my cousin and he bought it legit..he is as honest as the day is long....I guess I have to call Microsoft..Thanks for your help..Th cd of XP Home said upgrade but it never asked for the 98 cd..Thanks