Here's my situation: have just got hold of an old COMPAQ PIII 700, 192MB, 11GB, DVD, 14.1", NETWORK, 56K Not yet connected to the net and has no floppy drive. I want to install Win 98 SE from my own CD, it works fine on my home machine so I suspect is bootable. Now, do I just drop the disk in, or is there other things to do first like format or fdisk, and in what order. I know the Gurus on here must be sick of this question and I apologise in advance, but I have a problem following the instructions shown on other posts as their situation is not quite the same, and lap tops can be very tricky at times. Once installed I would like to transfer a few documents and pfd's as well as some pictures from the didgie cam. Any advice on how this is best done would also be appreciated, but I can wait till both computers are on the same wavelength as it were. Avagoodweekend all........

Hi Old, You can learn much here: http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.php In the case of this Compaq laptop, you have some additional challenges. Plain vanilla 98 will not have the laptop-specific drivers. Since there's no floppy, you may need to put the HD in another box. M2

Old - Windows of any version is not too keen on installing older versions over newer one, but may allow you to set up the older version in another directory. The safest might be to set it up as a new installation in a directory named c:\win98new or something like that; that way, you can still boot to your W2K and transfer the files you want to keep to the W98 directory. Doing it this way, SetUp might give you a message that the new install will NOT be bootable. If you want the machine to BOOT to Win98, then another option is to create/format an extra partition for W98, and put the installation there, but BOTH have to start in the 1st 2 gigs of the drive to be bootable, and you may have problems with "multiple visible partitions" as well. If you choose to create the extra partition, you may need to add a boot manager. Once everything you want is transferred to the new W98 partition, you could probably get rid of the W2K one and use a partition manager to expand the size of your "new" W98 partition to it's maximum, if nescessary. Personally, I would elect to install to a new partition, and try to copy the files across from the W2k "drive". You don't have to be realistic to be cynical, but you DO have to be cynical to be realistic!