Win2k installation

After I had my virus problems earlier this month, I was glad that I hadn't bothered to wipe Windows 98 off of my hard drive after I installed XP, since I was able to contain and eliminate the virus by booting into 98, which wasn't contaminated; Problem is, although I could use 98 as a stable platform to run a virus scan, I couldn't scan the majority of my disk space, since that was on NTFS.

As a solution to this issue, I've decided to install Windows 2000 Professional overtop of Win98 and convert all of my drives to NTFS. However, I don't have a lot of disk space to spare, so there's no way I can back up my entire C drive.

Win2k doesn't support upgrading from 98, so I'll have to do a clean install--My question is: Will installing Windows 2000 (Pro, not Server) erase or modify anything on my c: outside of the Windows directory? Also, will it overwrite the bootloader in a manner that will prevent me from booting into XP?

Win2K will definitely kill your bootloader as far as I know, but that's all I know. Whether it'd find the XP install, I don't know. The XP bootloader is pretty good at finding things though. I don't know if 2K's is too.

If you have a virus, wouldn't the safest thing be to burn all the files you want to save onto a CD or something, and then format c: and start over? From my experience, letting Windows try to "upgrade" from any version to any other version is just going to mess up everything. When Windows starts to die on me, I save my absolutely-essential files on CDs or floppies, kiss the semi-essential files goodbye, and start over from scratch.

All I know is that WinXP won't erase anything outside the Windows folder. I have no clue about Win2k.

Why not install WinXP over Win98? I found that to be extremely stable (lasted me over a year before I decided to reinstall everything because I wanted a clean system, even though the thing was still chugging along nicer after all that time than Win98 does after that long). WinXP should also find the other WinXP installation and will allow you to boot into either, although you might have problems distinguishing them initially until you edit boot.ini manually :p

Alternatively, try and find a program solely for cleaning that specific virus you had (such as from www.mcafee.com), download it to floppy disk, then boot into the infected WinXP and run it, that should work too.

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All I know is that WinXP won't erase anything outside the Windows folder. I have no clue about Win2k.

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It actually touches quite a few places on the drive you install to including Documents and Settings, and Program Files :p




Edit: Thinking about it, I'm not sure if installing XP over 98 is a feasable idea now, if your current Win98 and WinXP are on the same partition - if they're on different partitions, then it'd be fine, but I don't know what WinXP would do if you tried to install to the same partition as another WinXP.

I've installed XP on the same partition as another install of XP, one in c:\Windows and one in c:\WinXP, and it worked semi-OK. Program Files was obliterated beyond recognition, but I think it actually saves your "Documents and Setting stuff". It renames it from C:\Docume~1\Chester to C:\Docume~1\Chester_WINDOWS or something. I don't remember. But I could boot both versions of Windows perfectly fine.

I don't care about my obsolete win98 "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" directory, 'cause I haven't used 98 in a year, aside from when I had the virus hit.

Oh, and I don't have a virus now, I managed to clean it up--I'm just taking a precaution. Once I install 2k, I should be able to convert all of my drives to NTFS, since I won't have an OS left on that disk that can't read NTFS.