Stupid Windows Question

[jakejake28]

This is stupid, i know, but i am a DOS guy. I have an e-machines PC that came with win ME installed on it, but i have a win 98se disk i want to use on it. it will not allow me to use setup. what do i do??

[tyweed]

do you have info you need to rollover or can you start fresh from scratch? if you don't need alot of data just grab win 98 boot disk and re install

[Cue-Ball]

You should be able to boot from the Win98 CD and install Win98 from it.  You'll have to format the drive that ME is installed on though or things will get ALL screwed up.  Win98 and WinME are not compatible at all.  The kernels for the two OSs are completely different so don't try to transplant any 98 stuff to ME or you'll just end up with a non working computer.

[daywane]

I have a pc with Me on it. It was my first windows pc.
I hated Windows ME at first I switched it over to 98 se and found some diferant things I missed. like the jpeg viewer in windows me is far better on ME and slide show is not to befound on 98se. most everything I put into my PC was EZ Plug and play. 98se is more of a pain to install ( at least for me it is. I hate tracking down my windows 98 disk just to install a joystick, web cam , printer. ect

dos sucks on windows ME
system resourses stay at peek a hell of a lot longer on 98se
My windows ME pc needs to be restarted 2 times a day. my 98se about once a week.

[paigeoliver]

Windows ME is perhaps the worst Microsoft Windows release since Windows 1.0

It adds nothing that isn't available freely (and BETTER) from other vendors. It is far less stable, uses more system resources, and has less hardware compatibility than any other 9x windows release.

I'd pick Windows 95 over Windows ME in a heartbeat.

[wee beastie]

WAIT!!!!

Don't those emachines have motherboards with everything integrated?  If so, I'd make sure (or double check) that you have all the necessary 98 drivers.  If I recall correctly, someone else was going to do this (on another message board) except they wanted to install linux.  It turned out that emachines only provided drivers for ME and no other operatig system.

I could be entirely wrong, but I just don't want you to screw anything up on your system.

wee

[paigeoliver]

The emachines drivers are terrible anyway. I don't know of a single piece of computer hardware in the entire world that is supported by Me, but not by 98.

Best thing to do with any crappy OEM computer like that is to format it. And then install a fresh OS on the formatted disc. Drivers for the various chipsets on the motherboard will be available from the chipset manufacturer's website, and will probably be better than what is on the emachines disc anyway.

[BASSOFeeSH]

I hate tracking down my windows 98 disk just to install a joystick, web cam , printer. ect

Copy the CD to the harddrive, problem solved.

[paigeoliver]

To me more specific. Run your install in this order.

Boot from the setup disc with CD support (option #2)

D: (or whatever driver your cdrom is)
cd win98
format C:
C:
mkdir win98
D: (make sure it pops you back in the win98 directory)
copy *.* C:\win98
C:
cd win98
setup


That will format the harddrive, copy the install files, and then install from the harddrive. When you do it this way it will always look on the harddrive for the files first, rather than on the CDROM.