Ok everyone...I am trying to upgrade a friends computer to Win 98 presently using Win 95. This is my problem. Looking at the specs for the upgrade, he only has 16 megs of Ram his hard drive and an upgrade requires at least 24, also he doesn't seem to have that much space left on the hard drive. When I took the cover off, I notice he had two banks of simms modules. Ok that means that each stick must be 4 meg right. If I am wrong do correct me. Also I notice that two of the sticks seems to be a little bigger than the other two. when I say bigger, I mean they are sitting just a tab bit higher. If I want to give him at least 24 megs of ram, how should I do this, it has two free banks left. Ok also I feel I need to recover some disk space somehow. He brought this computer used, and I don't want to mess it up, but I feel this is some experience I don't want to lose. I feel I can handle it, If I had the right information to go on. It is a Pentium computer made by Compaq. i am gonna do some searching online, but I decided to come here first. I gotta question, I go to "examnotes"
any help will be appreciated.

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if they're simms your prolly right about em being 4 megs (if there is 4 of em) he has a free bank (2 slots) so try finding some 16meg simms (they should be pretty cheap) toss em in and as far as the hard drive how big is it now, does he have all his setup cd's for his programs if so backup all data files (if he even needs em) onto a zip drive or (if you have about a month) floppy
if he don't need the data files jus format the drive or you could just buy a new hard drive (relatively cheap nowadays) and setup the new OS on the new drive (if you can put a new drive in that particular model of compaq) some of em are pretty peculiar
best of luck and you're right that is the best way to get experience

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he says as far as he is concerned, he needs none of the data on it. If I am gonna format, is it ok to install Windows 98SE upgrade version after I format. What about installing the cd rom and sound card drivers and all that If I have none of the installation disks?

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I agree with jombeewoof simms should be dirt cheap! Especially 16MB. We have a load of these here at work collecting dust.

Here is what I would do.

1) Get more memory
2) Examine hard drive. Find out how big the drive actually is.
3) Find out what all he wants to run on this machine. If you have 100MB free after the install, and he wants to run some monster programs, I would invest in a different drive. Again, fairly cheap nowdays! (Be careful though because some older machines are very picky about how big of a drive you slap in there!)
4) Check and find out what hardware is on the machine. Sound card, video, etc. You can find this in the Device Manager. Make note of these! If Win98 doesn't automatically detect them, you will have to download drivers off the net. Usually you can find drivers for just about anything!
5) Format drive.
6) If you only have a Win98SE upgrade, you have to have a prior version of Windows installed. So, if you don't have Win95 disks, don't do step 5!

Actually, find that out first! If he doesn't have that, then either he has to find a copy of 98 somewhere or stick with what he has. (I still would suggest more mem just because pricing is cheap and mem is always nice.)

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he is presently running Windows 95 and wants to upgrade to Windows 98 and already have a WindowsSE upgrade disk. He is taking computer classes and they are using Windows 98. No special use, mostly word processing, maybe make greeting cards, banners etc..nothing special. That is his use of the computer

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...that SIMMS always need to be paired off in the RAM slots as well. 2 of the RAM cards you say are a bit different in size, thats fine. You can stick 2x16MB cards in but make sure they are the same otherwise

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quote:

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Originally posted by lillian40
he is presently running Windows 95 and wants to upgrade to Windows 98 and already have a WindowsSE upgrade disk.

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If you fdisk that Compaq HDD, DO NOT delete the "non dos" partition. That is the place that Compaq puts the setup info. If you delete this patition you will have erased your CMOS settings. This portion is the F10 setup to get into the BIOS and change the settings.You can delete the other partitions and format but don't delete the "non dos" partition.

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thanks all for the information and the advice. He has Windows 95 already on the hard drive. He purchased a upgrade of Windows 98 SE hoping to upgrade his computer to 98.
But this is the information I found out from Compaq. Ok this is a Prolinea 590. I has a 420mb hard drive
It has 16 megs of ram .I think it can max about was 196megs or something. I was told that since a upgrade would take up all of the hdd space that I could

quote:

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. Probably the best way to try to get to win98 is upgrade the win95 that's already on the drive. To do this you can run setup of win98 from within win95

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Thanks to jombeewoof for reminding us about that elusive non dos partition! Sure confuses someone until they delete it and find no more F10 for BIOS setup.

As for the response that you got, I believe that they are talking about running the install that is on the Win98SE upgrade disk.

However, with that small of a drive, I wouldn't bother with 98. Just personal opinion though!

Good Luck!

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