Advice on a 64bit system upgrade

[Dave-H]

Tried doing a Windows 8 install yesterday using the 64 bit disk from the disk set that I installed the 32 bit version on my netbook from.

This was just to see if the installer would choke because it couldn't see the NX bit.

I tried to do it onto an NTFS SSD I already have installed, but it wouldn't have it, I assume because it's not a primary partition.

As I didn't want to re-format that drive as it's got stuff on it I want, I'll have to wait until I can get and fit another SSD and see how that goes!

[yuhong]

They were never going to address it on XP with end of support so close, and certainly won't now of course!

If it's causing issues with POSReady systems they might, But I think that's extremely unlikely.

Except there is still Server 2003. Anyone able to repro this bug on Server 2003 BTW? I suspect that the same bug is there but want to confirm.

[Dave-H]

Finally got another SSD fitted, and I've managed to install Windows 8 from my 64bit disk.

It allowed the install to complete fine, but won't let me activate it as I've already used the serial number on my netbook.

 

I've now bought another cheap Windows 8 serial number on-line, I hope not from anywhere dodgy!

They use PayPal, and look legit, but I suppose they always do!

I'm still waiting for it to be e-mailed to me, but if it all goes wrong at least it was only $40.....

 

Once I've got it activated, one way or another, I will do the free upgrade to Windows 8.1.

It all looks very hopeful, all the hardware was installed OK, and it looks as if I needn't have worried about the NX bit!

 

At the moment the only way I can switch between booting Windows 98/XP and Windows 8 is by changing the first boot drive in the BIOS, which is not terribly convenient, so once I've got Windows 8.1 up to speed I'll look into a multi-boot interface of some sort.

 

I used Easy BCD on my netbook to give me the actually rather elegant Windows 8 OS choice screen so I can choose to boot to Windows 8.1 or XP.

If I choose XP the machine completely re-boots into XP, but I gather that's how it has to work.

 

If I can get that to work on my main machine I'll be very pleased, but I bet Easy BCD won't know anything about Windows 98!

[dencorso]

Grub4DOS can solve *all* your multibooting needs.

OTOH, your prospective new key seems a little too cheap, so be careful.

[Dave-H]

Thanks Den, yes the price did seem to be a bit too good to be true, but it worked OK!

Whether it's a dodgy key of some sort I haven't dared look to find out, but all OK so far.

I activated Windows 8 and then did the free upgrade to Windows 8.1.

Seems perfectly happy with  the hardware, the only thing i had to manually download and install a driver for was the Adaptec SCSI card, but that's fine now and I can see all my drives fine.

I will look into Grub4DOS and see what it can do.

 

BTW, the nice man at Supermicro gave me a link to the files to re-flash the GLAN hardware on the motherboard, and re-flashing completely fixed the problem with them, and they're now working fine.

I can't find any drivers for them that will work in Windows 98SE unfortunately, but I will keep looking as I'd dearly love to be able to get rid of the plug-in Ethernet card that's taking up a slot. It's really annoying to have to use that when I've now got two on-board Ethernet connections working, just to get Internet access on Windows 98!

Cheers, Dave.