Reversion to Windows 98SE?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers

Hi,

HP's are full of proprietary hardware, finding drivers may prove to be
difficult. If you are going to use PM, make sure it is WinXP compatible, or
you can potentially lose access to the installed system. Before doing
anything, backup critical files. Also, if the trouble is eminating from
malfunctioning hardware, then installing Win98 isn't going to help.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
A friend has an HP Pavillion running XP which has become far more trouble
than it's worth. I am considering the possibility of installing
Partition Magic (of Windows 98 vintage) to create another bootable partition
on which I would install Windows 98SE. (The peripherals are: a printer,
scanner, keyboard and mouse and I assume I could get 98 drivers for them.)
Is there any reason why I could not do this?

Many thanks.
 
Thanks Rick - I'll kick that idea into touch following your advice and
press on with the troubleshooting tomorrow.

I'm most grateful for your kind help.

Martin
 
Martin said:
A friend has an HP Pavillion running XP which has become far more trouble
than it's worth. I am considering the possibility of installing
Partition Magic (of Windows 98 vintage) to create another bootable
partition
on which I would install Windows 98SE. (The peripherals are: a
printer,
scanner, keyboard and mouse and I assume I could get 98 drivers for them.)
Is there any reason why I could not do this?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

A couple of issues:

If that version of PM is that old, it may not play well with XP. So, it may
do fine for installing 98, but you could kill XP in the process.

If the computer came with 98, you should be fine reinstalling it, assuming
HP has kept the drivers on its site (and that's a big "if" sometimes). But
if it came with XP, there's a good chance that the older drivers won't be
available. You might be okay finding other drivers for things like the video
card, modem, etc., but chipset drivers for that proprietary HP motherboard
may not exist anywhere for 98.

If the computer came with xp and it's under warranty, you may be voiding the
warranty (if that matters) or you may need to restore back to the original
configuration if you need any support.

If the computer came with a hidden partition for the OS recovery, using PM
may be problematic. I had an IBM computer here with a hidden recovery
partition, and neither PM (the latest version) nor Boot It NG (latest
version) could do a thing with that drive. It saw the whole drive as one
"bad" partition and wouldn't let me do anything with it, although other
utilities could see both the XP partition and the hidden one as separate
partitions.

You may have to wipe out XP to get 98 to load. If you do that, you may not
be able to get XP back on without buying a new version of XP, if they only
provided a hidden recovery partition.

If you really want to load 98 on the computer, it may be better to just
install it on a new hard drive, and not mess with the existing partitions,
just in case 98 doesn't work as you expect.
 
Martin said:
A friend has an HP Pavillion running XP which has become far more trouble
than it's worth. I am considering the possibility of installing
Partition Magic (of Windows 98 vintage) to create another bootable partition
on which I would install Windows 98SE. (The peripherals are: a printer,
scanner, keyboard and mouse and I assume I could get 98 drivers for them.)
Is there any reason why I could not do this?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

If your HP's hard drive is using NTFS then your old version of
Partition Magic may not be able to properly adjust the size of the
existing partition so as to create space for the new FAT32 partition
for Windows 98. But if the drive is FAT32 and is not larger than 60
mb there should be no problem.

I used an old version of Partition Magic and also Boot Magic up until
fairly recently, and it worked just fine as my hard drive was only 40
gb and all of the partitions were FAT32. When I recently moved to a
120 gb drive and converted some of the partitions to NTFS I retired
the old Partition Magic and started using BootItNG (www.bootitng.com)
for my partitioning work and as my boot manager.

A couple of things to check before you start on this project.

1. Go to the HP website and make certain that there are Windows 98
drivers available to download for your exact Pavilion model number.
Otherwise the proprietary hardware in the HP is going to be a problem
to get working with Windows 98.

2. If the HP is still under any sort of factory warranty you might
want to reconsider the entire project. Most warranties are rendered
null and void if any operating system other than the one supplied with
the computer is installed.


And one final point. I have rarerly if ever encountered a Windows XP
system that is "more trouble than its worth". Pretty much all
problems, except for vintage peripherals for which the manufacturers
did not provide XP drivers and some vintage software that does not
follow the programming rules, can be resolved in Windows XP. You
might want to try posting the particulars of at least some of the XP
problems back here or to the windowsxp.general newsgroup. You should
receive some helpful advice regarind resolving these issues.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm
 
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