I screwed up my system....please help

[zoehoff]

I thought I was just cleaning up some files teh other day and when I went to boot up my system just kept running through the memory check and never booting up. I was working on windows xp upgrade from win 98 SE. The only way I could get my system to work again is to reinstall win 98. I thought by doing this I could then upgrade to xp again, but no. it says I have to many operating systems installed. I think although I'm using win 98, xp must still be hanging out somewhere.

Here is the message I got.

Blocking Issues (return to top)
Setup found some issues that will prevent you from upgrading your Windows installation. You must fix all of these issues before you can upgrade to Windows XP.
Installation Requirements


Other Operating Systems Found
You cannot upgrade this Windows installation to Windows XP, because you have more than one operating system installed on your computer. Upgrading one operating system can cause problems with files shared by the other operating system, and is therefore not permitted.


I have no idea what to do. Please help

 

[cyber_surfer]

zoehoff

Did you have XP installed once already?
Were the blocking issues only present after you reinstalled 98?
You may have problem software after XP is installed (like roxio 4 would need to be replaced).

You should have at least 256 MB of memory for XP.

But if you are ready to go the following should clear things up.

I would suggest a clean install of XP. Go into the BIOS and change the 1st boot location to the cd drive. Place the XP upgrade disk in the cd drive and reboot. Then follow instructions. It will ask for the 98 OS disk just to verify you have it.
You will be back in business and have a very stable computer. This way you won't be bringing along any of the accumulated stuff from running another OS for a period of time.

I would suggest not using the quick format, picking NTFS as the file system and going with one partition which will default to "C" when it is created.

You will do fine.

 

[zoehoff]

All I have is the XP Home upgrade disk. Will it still work as you have said?

 

[cyber_surfer]

Yes sir it definitely will work.
I have done an upgrade from ME with one and later two clean installs with the same XP upgrade disk ( to the same machine).

 

[zoehoff]

You're a genius. Thanx
I didn't even lose any info. W00t