how the hell do I go from winME to win98??!

[fiNgA_UK]

Hi, I got a pc ere, its an Advent thing from a pc store, yeah, pcworld, I know :(

Anyway, my prob is trying to get the damn windowsME off it so I can install win98, basically this ME is giving me so much grief when trying to get me isdn card and network card working, I either get one or the other, both are installed correctly, and they have both been working at one point, but now my network wont work at all, or my isdn wont work at all, finally got internet working on it again but ive tried everything with the network, and it just wont log onto the network, lights are on on the hub, but nobodies home.

Ive reinstalled from scratch with the quick format and windows installation from the recovery disc, which meant putting all the original peripherals back in so it would install ME properly, which is so damn gay and is bending my head big time, now I just wanna bin this ME and stick win98 on this machine, but I cant format damn drive, format c:/s is not supported on this version, and Ive took HDD out and connected to win98 machine as a slave and formatted it from there, but when I stuck it back in this machine and installed win98, it got to the end and then told me there was allready an OS on the hdd and messed up.

Can someone help me and tell me exactly how to COMPLETELY wipe this 20gb hdd and get me win98 on it before I lob this drive from the balcony and have to go buy a brand new one.

please?

[Uranium]

Theres one problem all your drivers you will have to get and know where to get them. The recovery disk you have there has all the drivers and everything setup so you install it and it will go back to normal. But all these drivers are for ME.

TBH it is a pain in the ar5e for these PC's brought from PC World as they are cheapo bits thrown into a PC, and rarely do they ever give you the drivers on disk. Only these recovery disks.

So if you format it then stick Win 98 on your going to be stuck with finding the right drivers.

[JGJones]

You mentioned a 2nd PC...if it's running Windows 98 then from that PC make a bootdisk (Control Panel\Add/Remove Programs and click on Startup Disk tab)

Then on the evil pcworld PC insert it...then you'll be able to format it. As a safety measure do fdisk /mbr - that resets the MBR part of the disk (where the PC look at when booting up for the first time)

As a safety measure to ensure you have fully exocised your PC before doing format you start up Fdisk and remove the Primary partition and then make a new primary partition and then run fdisk /mbr and then run format c:\ - a bit of a overkill but it's not good enough for Win ME :E

The startup disk will have CD-ROM drivers included as well so you can install Windows 98 from CD using it at bootup.

Lastly...never ever use a recovery CD...I assume that it restore Windows ME plus all the "pre-installed" crap already included...I generally have found them to be much slower than if you did a custom install (as tested on my father's idiotic purchase of a Packard Bell PC) as well as a wee bit more unstable. It's good enough for total newbies...nothing more :)

[fiNgA_UK]

Thats exactly wot my mate told me 2 hours ago, but I had to get format.com onto a floppy as the win98 bootdisk dont have that command on, but thanks for taking the time to reply to my question.
Getting drivers for the grfx(TNT2 Model64 32mb) and soundcard(SB128PCI) which were in machine originally aint been a problem, and theyve been stuck in the other machine in exchange for its geforce2 gts and sblive
I dont like the way you cant boot in DOS on a winME machine, it really is crap, and I hate these OEM versions of windows wotever but everything is running sound now, like lightning
Normally there is absolutely no way I'd buy a machine from a store like this, its the first time I have and Ive had 3 pcs now, but due to the fact I got 10% discount on it and 9 months interest free credit on it thru the missus and I couldnt wait to save for the parts individually I got it

[[)REA[)]

Blimey! you guys really like to make a chore of things.

Firstly, I have an Advent from PCworld and I have to say in all the years of using/programming/building/studying PC's its the best PC I have ever had. Bar none. Ok, so I had a quick restore disk with ME on and no original Windows CD. But they did give me the disk's with all the drivers i needed. PCworld/Dixons always give out these disk's with their Advent/Patriot PCs. Even if I did not have it I could have downloaded them (i did anyway because they were a litle old now).
I have a 1GHz Athlon, 128 RAM, Geforce2 MX, 8x DVD etc and it was a ****ing bargin at £790 excluding monitor (or $710 without the Geforce2), by anyone's standards. It went faulty on me (actually I ****ed it up but don't tell 'em that ;)) and they payed my taxi fare to the shop and swapped it straight over for a new one.
I benchmarked it with various app's such as 3Dmark 2000 and it scored a whopping 7600. "Lightning" springs to mind. And that's in 3Dmark's websites (www.madonion.com) hall of fame for a PC of that spec. There 'aint nothing wrong with an advent compaired to crap like Tiny or Packard Bell (the newer ones anyway). And the parts inside are not cheapo either mate (appart from the modem) fast memory, 7200RPM harddrive, fast mobo and a rather tasty 1GHz Athlon. I love it me (can you tell? :)). No Windows disk? I forgive 'em. Anyway, even if you had the original Windows ME disk you would still have all the same hastle you've had.

Oh one more thing mate - don't forget to download the lastest 4 in 1 mainboard drivers from http://www.viatech.com. Will make a massive difference.

[fiNgA_UK]

my mainboard isn't a via chipset one, its an amd chipset, is there anything I should be installing for that?

[[)REA[)]

Well just get latest mobo drivers for it, its the most common thing people forget after a format. Probably get them of their webby.

[Brocken]

Best thing to do is get a small HDD, e.g. about 4 gigs or summit and install it as a backup drive so you can save stuff you want to back up onto it. Then reformat your C drive and reinstall everything.

[[)REA[)]

Nice cheap and easy option eh!
Why not just partition the one he has.

[fiNgA_UK]

Ive got a 3 pc LAN here at home,16 port 100base hub and 2 cd writers, I dont need another hdd to back files up :)