Win 98SE Lock-up during install...

I have been trying to do an "over-install" (that is, reinstalling Win 98SE over the top of an existing installation) for a day or so now. All is well until it gets to the screen that has "Windows is now setting up the following items" and it gets to the 2nd one, which is "Programs on the Start Menu". The hard disk whirrs happily to itself for a minute or so, then nothing. I've let the machine sit for an hour now - all that is happening is that the hdd activity light flashes briefly every now and again. There is no set pattern to the flashing: sometimes there are a few short flashes in a row, then a 10 second pause; sometimes there is a single flash every 5 secs etc etc. Obviously the setup program is getting stuck on something - what would it be? The mouse pointer still moves, the caps-lock still responds on the keyboard, and I can even move the "Windows 98 Setup" dialog box around the screen - so the system hasn't crashed. The computer is a PIII 450 with 256Mb of RAM. Any help gratefully received... :o

Hi IB-77,welcome to Techzonez.I suggest that if you have a cdrw installed on that machine then backup all the stuff you want to keep and do a fresh install.In my past experience in trying to copy over a previous installation I have had very little luck with that proceedure. :D

Thanks for your info. I have considered that as a probable course of action. In fact, I have installed a fresh OS onto a different HDD for that machine, and all is well. However, there are some things I want to check on the previous installation (like what the dial-up settings were etc), and I only know how to find them on an "active" system. Also, when I copied the address book to the new system, it won't open - says something like "is not a valid address book" or similar. I was wondering if I might be able to open it in the "original" system, export the data, then transfer the exported data onto the new "clean" system. I have already recovered the e-mails and all the stuff from the "My Documents" folder - it's just the address book and dial-up settings I really am trying to get back now. Any further thoughts? :confused:

You could try booting to DOS. Then copying the files from the 98 install CD to the HDD in a folder. Any will do.

Then boot to dos, cd to the folder, and run the setup.exe or install.exe (* I forget which it is), and it might install 98 over the existing installation using the HDD. This would eliminate 2 issues that might cause the hang, 1 the CDROM and two the 98 disk itself.

thats a good point BB, copying the install files has proven very helpful in the past for 95/98... and speeds things up considerably! ;)

If all you need to do is look at system settings why not boot to the previous installation and look at them? If the hard drive is still setup to be used just change your BIOS configuration to boot that drive instead of the new one. This should allow you to examine any settings you need to see and write them down so you can implement them for the fresh install.

:confused:
Well, there's a turn-up for the books! I did an alt-ctrl-del on the system, planning to do a soft-boot. The Task Manager window popped up, and there were 2 programs running: Windows 98 Setup and something called grpconv (I think). I was able to terminate grpconv, and the installation continued! I have just restarted to see if everything is ok - technically, the install is complete. We'll soon see... more later... :rolleyes:

Glad to hear. Very odd problem and solution..

about grpconv:

grpconv - grpconv.exe - Process Information

Process File: grpconv or grpconv.exe
Process Name: Windows Program Group Converter

Description:
grpconv.exe is a Windows Operating System tool. It is used to convert Windows 3.1 groups to folders when upgrading to Windows 95 or later. This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/...brary/grpconv/