Full 95, upgr 98, upgr XP..do it all again?

[van]

Have Full OEM 95 that I upgraded to 98, then to Home XP.
New HDD coming soon, will I have to do the whole process
over again? Please tell me there is a way around doing
that. Old HDD is frozen solid, shop said to toss it. So
no way to get the old files or setting either. 1GHZ
Athalon W/512 RAM, All in Wonder 32mb video card,
Soundblaster PCI, nice setup would like to have working
again with XP. Also still looking for the 95 CD-Key (day
three, beginning to worry there).
thanks for any help :)

[Squire]

The Retail versions of XP CD's are bootable.
Set your BIOS to boot the CD before your Hard drive.
All you need is an earlier version of a Windows CD.
It will tell you when to insert the early version for verification.
All the tools needed, are on the XP CD for partitioning and formatting.

"van" > wrote in message
...
> Have Full OEM 95 that I upgraded to 98, then to Home XP.
> New HDD coming soon, will I have to do the whole process
> over again? Please tell me there is a way around doing
> that. Old HDD is frozen solid, shop said to toss it. So
> no way to get the old files or setting either. 1GHZ
> Athalon W/512 RAM, All in Wonder 32mb video card,
> Soundblaster PCI, nice setup would like to have working
> again with XP. Also still looking for the 95 CD-Key (day
> three, beginning to worry there).
> thanks for any help :)

[Ken Blake]

In , van wrote:

> Have Full OEM 95 that I upgraded to 98, then to Home XP.
> New HDD coming soon, will I have to do the whole process
> over again? Please tell me there is a way around doing
> that.


There is a way around doing that.

Despite what many people think, you *can* do a clean installation
with an upgrade CD. The requirement is to *own* a previous
version, not to have it installed. Just insert the Windows 98 (or
95) CD as proof of ownership when prompted to do so.

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

[Michael Stevens]

"van" > wrote in message
...
> Have Full OEM 95 that I upgraded to 98, then to Home XP.
> New HDD coming soon, will I have to do the whole process
> over again? Please tell me there is a way around doing
> that. Old HDD is frozen solid, shop said to toss it. So
> no way to get the old files or setting either. 1GHZ
> Athalon W/512 RAM, All in Wonder 32mb video card,
> Soundblaster PCI, nice setup would like to have working
> again with XP. Also still looking for the 95 CD-Key (day
> three, beginning to worry there).
> thanks for any help :)

Van,
You can follow the steps in the link below for clean installing XP. Step #8
explains clean installing with the upgrade CD.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP

http://michaelstevenstech.com
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