Remove any programs which
prevent access to the boot track on the hard disk, such as Norton Bootlock.
Go into the computer's CMOS
setup and disable any setting which warn if the boot track is about to be
changed.
Be sure you have your
Internet info (account, password, DNS settings, etc.)
Run (Start, Run) msconfig
and turn-off any unnecessary start-up programs, etc. (turn them back on
after the upgrade, if you desire).
Double-check your drive for
any important data which you may have overlooked when you did the backups.
Install
as an Upgrade. Installing the Windows Me upgrade on top of an existing
Windows 9x installation is almost identical to installing the Windows 98/98 SE
upgrade:
Boot to your existing
version of Windows.
Insert the Win Me Upgrade
or into the CD-ROM drive.
Wait for the CD-ROM drive
to come-up to speed and autostart.
If you are prompted with a
message asking if you want to upgrade, simply click Yes. (There is no
Install option on the Start-up Window if it appears).
If not, Click Start, Run,
and enter setup.
Follow the Setup
instructions and choose Save the system files and make the Startup floppy
when prompted. This version of Windows does not force you to make the
Startup floppy as Win 98 and 98 SE did. So, if you have a shop and
plenty of Startup floppies you do not have run Setup from the DOS prompt
with the /ie flag to avoid having to dig out a blank floppy and waiting for
Setup to make the Startup floppy (that was most annoying).
You can also run setup from the
DOS prompt with a Startup disk if you can't get your existing Windows to
boot-up after an aborted install, etc...
D:\win9x\>setup.exe (where
D: is your CD-ROM letter).
Clean
Install. I experimented with a couple of other hard disk drives and
found that installing the Full Retail Version of ME on a bare hard disk drive
was altogether a different matter than the using it as an upgrade, and quite
crude for a retail package.
Instructions for doing it are on the ME CD ROM
at D:\win9x\cleanhd.txt, where D: is your CD-ROM drive. They start-out
with the following:
"IMPORTANT: All the
steps you need for preparing a hard disk and installing Windows Me are
included here. However, if you are an inexperienced user, it is not
recommended that you install the hard disk and prepare it for use yourself. If
you are not familiar with the related technical issues, it is recommended that
you contact a computer hardware service organization to do this."
The instructions are lengthy.
Basically, they say you have to partition and format the drive before running
setup. If you read all of the cleanhd.txt and follow it carefully, you
should succeed in accomplishing the install.
If, however, you skip over
them, rely on past Windows experience, and read the label on the floppy that
comes with ME you may have problems as I did. The label says...
If you don't
have a previous operating system on your computer
Turn off your computer.
Insert the Boot Disk in
drive A
Turn on your computer.
Select option 1 to install
Windows Millennium Edition
Here is what one gets on the
screen When the floppy boots:
Help
Start computer with CD-ROM
support
Start computer without
CD-ROM support
Minimal boot
Partition
the hard disk. "Help" looks to me like an illogical choice
for a tech at a computer "hardware service organization."
A tech
probably would not read all of the cleanhd.txt file (I didn't) and choose
"4. Minimal boot" to fdisk the drive and avoid having to wait
for the CD-ROM drivers to load. That works. Use FDISK to create a
new partition on your new hard disk as follows:
A:\>fdisk
Will produce
the following screen
Your computer has a disk
larger than 512 MB. This version of Windows includes improved support for
large disks, resulting in more efficient use of disk space on large drives,
and allowing disks over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive.
IMPORTANT: If you enable large disk support and create any new drives on this
disk, you will not be able to access the new drive(s) using other operating
systems, including some versions of Windows 95 and Windows NT, as well as
earlier versions of Windows and MS-DOS. In addition, disk utilities that were
not designed explicitly for the FAT32 file system will not be able
to work with this disk. If you need to access this disk with other operating
systems or older disk utilities, do not enable large drive support. [this
is usually not a problem]
Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)...........? [Y]
Press the Enter key to accept
the default [Y] for FAT32. You will get the following menu:
FDISK Options
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Choose one of the following:
1. Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive
2. Set active partition
3. Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive
4. Display partition information
Enter choice: [1]
Press Esc to exit FDISK
Press Enter to select the
default [1]. The following screen will be displayed:
Create DOS Partition or Logical
DOS Drive
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Choose one of the following:
1. Create Primary DOS Partition
2. Create Extended DOS Partition
3. Create Logical DOS Drive(s) in the Extended DOS Partition
Enter choice: [1]
Press Esc to return to FDISK Options
Again, press Enter to select
the default. The following will be displayed
Again, press Enter to select
the default. The following will be displayed
Create Primary DOS partition
Current fixed disk drive : 1
Verifying drive integrity, xx%
complete.
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Do you wish
to use the maximum available size for a primary DOS partition
and make the partition active (Y/N) ....................? [Y]
At this point you can press
the Enter key and make the entire drive one partition, your C: drive, or enter
N and make a partition which occupies less than the entire drive. I
recommend 4 GB partition for the C: drive. You may want to allocated the rest
of the drive to the D: drive, but one can make more than just two partitions
if desired. The menus are quite self explanatory for accomplishing this task.
You will also want to create an Extended DOS partition and assign logical
drive D: to it (fdisk should do that automatically after the partition is
created). You must exit fdisk and reboot after creating each partition.
Only one of the partitions can be active. The active partition is the
one which will boot after Windows is installed. Make sure the primary
partition is Active by displaying the partition information.
If partitions already exist
on the hard disk drive, you will be able to display and delete them with fdisk.
After making sure you have everything of value backed up, you can take the
drive down to "bare metal" with delete partition functions.
This will, of course, destroy all data on the drive (or make it very difficult
to recover). Do it at your own risk. to be sure the boot record is
rather pristine you may want to restore it to the way it was when it came from
the manufacture with C:\>fdisk /mbr (where mbr = manufacturer's boot
record).
Format
the partitions. After creating the partitions and making sure the
primary DOS partition is active, and rebooting to the floppy, an experienced
tech might assume that the Windows Setup would format the drive. Not so.
That has to be done manually.
And, by the way, It cannot be done from
"4. Minimal boot." Issuing the Format C: command there
results in the following error message:
Invalid media type reading
Drive C:
Menu choices "1.
Help" and "2. Start with CD-ROM support" do allow
formatting drive C: without error.
So, reboot the computer to the
floppy.
Select "2.
Start Computer with CD-ROM support," and format the C: drive as follows:
A:\> format c:
Do not use the /s
(transfer system files) flag with the format command. Win ME does not
support it (by the way, Full Versions of Windows 98/SE will not install if it
is done). Also, the SYS command results in an error message.
Get a cup of coffee...
Repeat for the D: drive, etc.
Get two cups of coffee.
Run Setup.
After formatting all of the partitions, change drives to your CD-ROM drive and
execute Setup from the DOS as follows:
A:\>E:
E:\>win9x\setup.exe (where
E: is your CD-ROM letter).
Follow the Setup instructions.
If you are using the upgrade, Setup will ask you to insert the CD or floppies
from the previous version and will verify it/them. Choose to make the
Startup floppy when prompted.
You may opt to feed it a new floppy disk or
use the one you that came with Windows ME.
