Reinstalling Windows

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How To Setup Windows 98 Quickly

You may wish to print these instructions for reference during installation.

  1. Make sure you have a BACKUP of the data you wish to retain somewhere other than on the hard drive you plan to set up.
  2. Make sure the computer is off.
  3. Insert your bootable floppy diskette or the myTools CD.
  4. Turn on the computer.
  5. During the boot process, select the "Start computer with CD-ROM Drive support" option.
        Note: there are six (6) different CD-ROM drivers available.
  6. At the "A:\>" prompt, if the myTools CD is not already in the drive, insert it now.  If you do not have a copy of the myTools CD, insert your Windows 98 CD and skip to step 8.
  7. Once the CD light stops blinking, type "LOAD98 n:" (where n: is the current CD drive letter assignment and press the ENTER key; this will Ghost the local drive from the image on the myTools CD.  Once the process indicator (the 0-100% bar) appears, remove the boot diskette (if applicable).  Once done, the system will AUTOMATICALLY restart.  Skip to step 9.
  8. Once the CD light stops blinking, run WinSetup.bat and following the instructions.
  9. Upon any restart, you MUST remove all floppy diskettes and CDs.
  10. The Windows 98 installation will recommence with 18 minutes remaining.
        Note: you will need a valid Windows 98 registration number.
  11. Once the system has rebooted, you can complete the setup by installing the desired Microsoft Windows Updates.

Three ways to reinstall Windows when upgrading/changing the motherboard

Option 1:

Use the XP boot CD and go into the Recovery Mode Console. There you type in fixboot (this will replace the HAL so Windows can now interact with your new hardware), type fixmbr (this will create a new MBR entry), and then type exit (this will reboot your computer), eject the CD and you should be able to boot into Windows. There all you need to do is install the new drivers and it will be fully functional. You may have to call up Microsoft to reactivate your version of XP because you now have different hardware hash number, but...

Option 2:

Windows Reinstall may also work.  Or...

Option 3:

For various flavors of Windows it depends...

Windows 98/ME... delete the "ENUM" folder directly under "HKEY_Local_Machine"

Windows 2K/XP... under "HKEY_Local_Machine" then under "SYSTEM", under EACH "ControlSet" folder (you could have several), delete the "ENUM" folder.