What if I ever need to reinstall Win98?

[KRH]

Before installing Win98SE Sp2.1a and Win98SE2ME, I would like to ask what's going to happen if I ever need to do a reinstallation of Windows in order to repair it. Will I be able to do it by my usual method of booting to DOS and simply installing from the folder on my hard drive containing the Win98SE setup files, or will I need to take special steps before or after the installation in order to deal with the changes made by the upgrades?

[Graz]

I'd like to ask the same question. I need to reinstall 98SE after my shell extensions and start menu program groups all disappeared, but I have the SP installed. Will I need to uninstall that first, or can 98SE be reinstalled on top of the SP?

[MDGx]

To be honest, I never tried to reinstall 98 SE after I installed 98SE2ME or Gape's SP2.

If I ever do, I'll post here my findings.

[KRH]

Graz, I just today copied my platform to a larger hard drive. I'd like to run it for a few days to make sure it's working properly, then I can install the service pack and WIN98SE2ME on my old drive and try reinstalling Windows. If your problem can wait that long, I'll post the results here.

Edit: I see that you have the service pack but you make no mention of Win98SE2ME. I'll try first with just the service pack and then repeat it with 98SE2ME. That would probably be better for the sake of a more comprehensive test.

Edited January 18, 2006 by KRH

[KRH]

Ok, here's my report: I reinstalled Windows with just the service pack installed and saw no outward signs of trouble. Then I tried it again with Win98SE2ME also installed. Again, there were no signs of trouble during setup, but obvious changes made. All I had to do was open Notepad to see that the default program had been restored. The obvious fix would be to reinstall Win98SE2Me without backing up again but since I couldn't see any reason why that wouldn't work, I didn't take the time to try it. Since I had originally checked the option to install the Notepad that comes with SP2, I should have checked that after the first reinstallation of Windows, but neglected to. I assume that Windows restored several of its defaults in relation to that program, also. At any rate, no real issues were created by reinstalling Windows and I'm sure that simply reinstalling both programs would fix everything.

While I was at it, I tried restoring my original Windows and uninstalling both Win98SE2ME and SP2.1a and that went without a hitch. All in all, I guess I've answered my own question and I feel confident in installing both of those programs for real on my current hard drive.