sadievan

this is a place for facts, not opinions. Opinion never fixed a computer in his life. I've installed 98/SE OEM over 98 more times than I even want to admit to. (Sorry, Bill !) You first copy the SE OEM disk to a folder on the HD. Only the \win98\ folder need be copied. Then you boot up the PC with your 98 boot disk and go into the windows folder and rename win.com to win.old .....then you navigate into the newly created \win98\ folder and run Setup.exe /ie /is Setup will start and run normally. It only looks for win.com, not the registry. Setup will also run much faster and smoother from the folder on the HD than from the original CD. And, if ever 98/SE needs to install some new feature.....the files are already on the HD. This is a hard, cold fact that MS probably doesn't want anyone to know about. (Bbviously! ) But I've been doing it as long as there's been copies of 98/SE OEM on the streets. In this process, all apps, data and drivers are preserved. (Don't ask me why it works....it just does!) Cheers Mates! B) Thanks for the detailed explanation. When I tried, I did not boot up from a boot disk, that was my problem. I used the drivers mentioned above by georg and they worked on my 98 laptop. I have saved this thread in case I need to update in the future. Thanks again.

Thanks. This worked for me on my old laptop running 98. I unzipped the files to a floppy drive. After inserting the flash drive, it asked for drivers. I steered it to the floppy and it installed. This has worked with a sandisk drive and a generic 2 gig one I bought from Micro Center.

Alexa, Are you saying you installed a driver for a flash drive and it worked in 98 (not SE)? The flash drives I have do not have drivers with them. I wonder if I downloaded the generic nusb drivers if they would work. Also, if I did have to install SE, using your suggestion (Navigate into the Win98SE folder and launch setup from there) would I still have to rename 'win.com' to 'win.old'?

I really just wanted to do an upgrade if I could. I gave the laptop to my son quite a while ago. He has some stuff on it and I really didn't want to have to back up everything. What I really want the upgrade for, is to be able to use a USB flash drive on the computer.

I have Win 98 on an old laptop. I tried using my 98/SE OEM install CD and I get an error message that I cannot use this CD and must buy the Upgrade. I did rename 'win.com' to 'win.old' as suggested by Andromeda and it still doesn't work. Any suggestions. I need to upgrade so I can use a flash drive. Thanks, Carol

I have Win 98 on an old laptop. I tried using my 98/SE OEM install CD and I get an error message that I cannot use this CD and must buy the Upgrade. I did rename 'win.com' to 'win.old'. Any suggestions. I am also trying this to use a flash drive. Thanks, Carol