Upgraded to XP Professional

Computer (extremely old) was running Windows 98. I checked requirements and they were acceptable. Tried to upgrade the OS to XP Professional. Instead of using a clean installation, I inadvertently chose "upgrade." Now computer will partially boot up (windows is loading), will go through a disk check finding many errors with drivers, etc., and computer restarts. This is a continuous loop of booting, checking for errors, and restarting. I installed XP Profession SP1 and SP2. Now the computer is unusable. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem? Thanks for ANY help.

 

Upgrades from 9x to NT type Windows do not generally go well. If you have a backup of all your data, I would suggest that you start afresh with a clean XP installation.

 

Can you tell me how to do that? I tried reinstalling XP Professional, but it won't let me because I also installed SP2 which is a later version. I tried reinstalling SP2 and it won't work either. Do I need to reformat my hard drive? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

Thank you, Halo. I have the instructions and will follow them. I sincerely appreciate your help.

 

When you format your HD, I suggest that you do it as NTFS rather than FAT32.

 

pwilliner:

I formatted the HD with NTFS instead of FAT32. The computer is working like a dream now, and I cannot thank you all enough for your help.

My sincere thanks.

 

Quick question:

When I formatted the HD, did it wipe all the previous information stored on it?

Thanks!

 

Thanks again, Halo. I thought it would remove everything, but I wanted to be sure.