How do I tell if it is 98 or 98SE

Do you have to use the upgrade CD or can you also upgrade using a full Win98SE CD?
I know that they have a WIN98SE installation CD and license code spare.

well i dont think that can be done,,,,, and neither i will recommend that,,,, coz as compare to bearing all the messings of UPDATE,,,, its better u backup all ur data and do a Clean install of Win98SE from the full installation cd !!!

here u can see the Precautions which are needed before an UPGRADE >> http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/start-011.shtml
so dont u think that its easy to perform a Clean install :)

This is not going to be as easy as I hoped.
The trouble is is is a second hand PC with no drivers etc... I just know that if I install Win98SE on it then it probably wont recognise the modem so I will be stuffed getting drivers etc...

I think I will take a hard disk along with me and try installing it on that. That way if I get stuck I can put the old one back in.

The upgrade with a full version of 98se, rather than the upgrade version, is often possible.  What you need to do is rename the file win.com in the Windows directory to win.bak (or win.old, or whatever you like).  That should get you through the initial warning from setup that a version of Windows is already installed.  Then, as the setup proceeds, make sure you install in your old Windows directory, and not Windows.000 or some other directory that the install will want you to do...

how do I tell if it is the original 98 or 98SE?
If you go to START, CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM you will see

System
     Microsoft 98
     Second Edition
     4.10.2222A  {example}

Registered to:
     gonzal13
xxxx-OEM-xxxxx

You can buy an upgrade for win98 if it is not win98se as the example shown above.

gonzal13(joe)

For what it is worth, I did it with a full install and didn't lose anything. Don't remember if I had to rename win.com or not.

if you want to do a full install, you can start noting the devices in device manager, so you can tell what you want to install, or you could use following software to identify the devices :

http://www.h-oda.com/                              WCPUID      
http://www.lavalys.com/index.php?page=product&view=1            Everest home free

backup everything you want, with a straight copy to CD, or whatever you have,
download all the drivers for motherboard and devices, and do the install

nobus

www.driverguide.com offer a utility which will find and save all your current drivers. Shareware for a short time. Works well.

Chris B

Thanks.

My company is getting rid of a couple old pc's which are a slightly higher spec than his so I have got one and I will install win98 on it and swap it for his. A benefit is that this PC has USB built in.

I had for a while my son sharing my PC. He had the nasty habit of turning off my Firewall and sometimes the antivirus program. This resulted in nasty frequent surprises. Reformating took a while. The hardest part was to reinstall the drivers from the various cd roms. Finally I made a temp file and copied into it all the important information in the windows system folder. This included opening and copy some of the contents of folders.

Well burning the information to one cd, I am now able to reformat my hd painlessly. I have only one cd rom to use. For example, when the PC recognizes a standard video card, I go to the system icon and click on the card and then click on update drivers. Thus the PC looks for the latest drivers and installs them. I burned the cd rom so that I can add more drivers etc to it in case I missed any.

Finally, I bought my son his own HD and installed as a master HD. Ithen installed a boot manager, so that my son could go to his own HD.

gonzal13(joe)