Can't install Win98SE or above

System:

P4 1.6GHz Intel
Intel D845WN Motherboard
256M RAM
Radeon 7000 64M TVO
Sony CD-RW
Segate 40G HD

System originally ran Win98SE. Guy who had it before me tried to
upgrade to Win XP when problems started. He said that when the machine
went to reboot during the upgrade, it would go no more. kept reporting
errors with the setup. He took it in to "Geeks To The Rescue" who
ended up putting in a new Motherboard. After that they got it to run
and u/g'ed the OS to XP. It ran fine for about 4 weeks or so, then
started rebooting itself, never fully loading into XP.

I've reformatted the HD to FAT32 and tried to load Win98 SE, but the
setup routine cannot load the installation files, let alone go any
further. Keeps reporting that "SUWIN has caused an error." Even tried
loading DOS 6.2, then u'g'ing to win98SE and keep getting the same
error (DOS 6.2 runs fine).

I've disconnected everything except the FD and HD, taken out the video
card and used an old Promise PCI card, swapped RAM sticks and power
supplies with ones I know that work fine in other systems swapped
HD's. I've updated the BIOS and disabled everything except what's
absolutly need, yet nothing I do will let load anything newer than the
old DOS OS.

Does anyone have any ideas, as I'm fresh out.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

This might help.

http://www.colba.net/~hlebo49/suwin.htm

I've also had trouble due to bad CDROMs more than once. Just a thought.

Looking at what's been tried I'd suggest you have either a faulty CD-Drive
or a hard drive with surface errors.

For example, you loaded DOS from floppy, right? Didn't use the CD and DOS
is so small it might fit before you ran into bad sectors on the hard drive.

Boot your win98se rescue disk and run a full surface scan on the hard
drive. If it has lots of errors then you probably need a new drive.

If it passes the surface scan then try a win98 install, since it's faster,
by copying the win98se directory on the CD to a win98se directory on the
hard drive and invoke setup (c:\win98se\setup.exe) from the hard drive. If
you can't even get the files to copy over then you may have a defective
CD-Drive (or master/slave misjumpered, or a bad cable, etc.).

Another thought under the "check the simple/little things first"; check your
OS CD for scratches.

Pretty confident that the original HD is good. Ran a "Deep Scan" on it
w/Spin Rite and no errors showed up. I even tried using a different HD
-- again after performing a "Deep Scan" w/Spin Rite and still the same
problems.

As to the install of Win 98, I FDisk-ed, formatted and copied the
Win98SE filesoff the CD to the HD than ran the install off the HD.

You can rule out the cd-rom by copying the cab files to the harddrive and
installing from there. Makes it faster when Windows needs to add new
devices too. I used to use \windows\options\cabs as the folder for them
because a lot of OEMs used the same location.

Anyhow, I expect the suwin error means you've got a problem with the RAM.
Are you sure it's set up correctly? No overclocking, etc?

--
Michael Cecil
http://home.comcast.net/~macecil/

I presume the install worked... so what was broke before?

I too transfer the files off OS CDs onto HDs then install from the HD. As
you point out, it's much faster. However, I've also had a few occasions
where the files transferred without error to the HD but it still would not
install off the HD (maybe 4-5 times in ~200 installations). Each instance
was solved by replacing the CDROM and re-transferring the files to the HD.
I can't explain it. If you have a spare CDROM, it's a quick try.

Just tried a different CD and still the same thing. Also tried running
the install direct off the CD with the same results.

This starts out peculiarly... why does one upgrade to XP, if
there were no problems UNTIL the upgrade to XP?

Rarely a CPU overheating or bios setting problem, more often
memory errors. Incredibly a large percentage of users have
no idea if their system is having memory errors and simply
blames windows or _____ .

Well, details of exactly what was going wrong would be
helpful. For example, simply reinstalling the OS is
somewhat pointless if there's nothing to suggest the OS was
the problem... it IS one step to try but ideally the other
factors should be examined first like memory, power,
overheating or fan failure.

Did you try clearing the CMOS first?
Also try underclocking the system.

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2 24th February 22:35 mdp External User Posts: 1	Can't install Win98SE or above This might help. http://www.colba.net/~hlebo49/suwin.htm I've also had trouble due to bad CDROMs more than once. Just a thought.

4 26th February 14:34 mdp External User Posts: 1	Can't install Win98SE or above Another thought under the "check the simple/little things first"; check your OS CD for scratches.

5 28th February 06:18 . External User Posts: 1	Can't install Win98SE or above Pretty confident that the original HD is good. Ran a "Deep Scan" on it w/Spin Rite and no errors showed up. I even tried using a different HD -- again after performing a "Deep Scan" w/Spin Rite and still the same problems. As to the install of Win 98, I FDisk-ed, formatted and copied the Win98SE filesoff the CD to the HD than ran the install off the HD.

7 29th February 22:13 david maynard External User Posts: 1	Can't install Win98SE or above I presume the install worked... so what was broke before?

9 2nd March 12:20 . External User Posts: 1	Can't install Win98SE or above Just tried a different CD and still the same thing. Also tried running the install direct off the CD with the same results.