Lol...I guess I can ask the neighbors and my wife's co-workers if any of them have a Win98/WinME CD lying around... ;)
I'll keep ya posted.
Any other ideas?...
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Browse All TopicsI've got an OLD HP Pavilion 9895 that originally had WinME on it. As most things do, this computer has changed with the times. It now has Win XP Pro (upgrade version) on it along with some new hardware such as a different video card, wireless network card, keyboard, mouse, etc... This computer is NOT powerful enough to run Vista!
Anyhoo...awhile back I bought a new larger hard drive and tried to use the software that came with it to copy the existing system over INTACT. It took literally ALL day to copy and the OS didn't work properly afterwards...sometimes it would allow me to login but then get stuck loading my desktop. After several tries and wasted days I gave up and kept the old hard installed with the new drive currently operating in "paper weight" mode. =\
The original system came with RESTORE disks that do NOT have an i386 folder on them. They simply wipe the hard drive and puts it back to the original state (using image files?) I CANNOT use these restore disks with the new hard drive as the restore fails.
So here is my question...does anyone know of a way for me to get a CLEAN install of Win XP Pro (using my UPGRADE version) onto my NEW hard drive? I can't install WinME onto the new hard drive so that the upgrade version of XP sees there is a previous version there. I cannot simply put the Restore CD into the CD-ROM drive because it doesn't have an i386 folder.
I have a feeling my best bet would be to simply buy a FULL version of XP Pro (expensive!) but what do you guys think?
Would it be worth it (feasible) to buy an old version of Win98se (approx $35-$50 on the net) and install that on the new drive so that I can then use my XP Pro Upgrade version? I feel WinME is too expensive to purchase for this purpose.'
Thoughts?...
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by: leewPosted on 2008-06-03 at 11:44:24ID: 21703220
If you have a legit prior OS, then I would just ask a friend to barrow his/her CD. The XP Pro CD will perform a CLEAN install, it just needs proof that you had a previous version of Windows - and will prompt you for the CD early on in the install process to prove it.