[cyberdyne]

Hi,
I've purchased the above under the impression (wrongly) that I would be able to upgrade my o/s; Win98SE.
Upon the first install atempt, I have seen that the only install avilable to me is a full install.
Is there a way of upgrading using my newly purchased WinXP Home OEM disc without losing all my documents / programs / email (outlook express), etc.

Thanks for any advice.

[Advertisements]

Hi,
I've purchased the above under the impression (wrongly) that I would be able to upgrade my o/s; Win98SE.
Upon the first install atempt, I have seen that the only install avilable to me is a full install.

have you tried running the upgrade cd from within windows? sometimes that will work when you can't get the upgrade option by booting to the disk

Is there a way of upgrading using my newly purchased WinXP Home OEM disc without losing all my documents / programs / email (outlook express), etc.

not really...you could in theory install me on the disk then delete the 98 version of the windows directory then fix your boot.ini file..but that's way to messy to concider as practical

[dsenette]

Hi,
I've purchased the above under the impression (wrongly) that I would be able to upgrade my o/s; Win98SE.
Upon the first install atempt, I have seen that the only install avilable to me is a full install.

have you tried running the upgrade cd from within windows? sometimes that will work when you can't get the upgrade option by booting to the disk

Is there a way of upgrading using my newly purchased WinXP Home OEM disc without losing all my documents / programs / email (outlook express), etc.

not really...you could in theory install me on the disk then delete the 98 version of the windows directory then fix your boot.ini file..but that's way to messy to concider as practical

[cyberdyne]

Well, its not actually an upgrade version. Its a full install OEM version of XP Home with SP2.
The problem is, its trying to delete my partition before the install and I want to preserve my O.E. address book / mail and MyDocuments. Basically, I only wanted to upgrade, but it seems I can't.
Presumably the only way forward is to save what I want and let it go ahead and wipe the disc?

Thank you

[dsenette]

indeed....backup all your important data to an external media (cds or an external drive) then format and install

[cyberdyne]

Ok, as I thought, thank you.

[Neil Jones]

Well, its not actually an upgrade version. Its a full install OEM version of XP Home with SP2.

OEM Windows will not let you upgrade. It will insist on wiping the disk. This is a feature of OEM Windows which is designed to go on systems without an operating system installed, hence no upgrade route.

The upgrade edition does just that, but as it also carries over any problems that were evident in the original Windows, it's usually far easier just to wipe it anyway.