I have the windows "step up" upgrade that was offered to people already running windows 98SE. My Windows 98SE was preinstalled and resides on a OEM "recovery disc". In the past when ever i did a clean install with an upgrade the upgrade disc would ask to see "qualifying software" i would insert the older version for a little while and it would prompt me to proceed with installation of the new operating system after confirming that i had the previous version. My question is: Will i be able to do a clean install with this 'step up' version? my understanding of OS upgrades is that the full version is on the upgrade disc and the only need for the previous version disc is to varify i qualify.(I may be wrong) PART TWO OF QUESTION: If this "step Up" version will allow me to do a clean install will the OEM "recovery disc" work as qualifying software? The recovery disc is provided by hewlet packard. I wish to do this clean install to get rid of the included OEM junk and to partition my drive for an additional operating system SuSE 7.1 linux. thanks

Yes you can do a clean install with the step up disk. I do not know if the recovery cd will qualify as qualifying software. Sorry!!

The recovery disk will NOT work as a qualifying product. But if you can beg, borrow, or steal a normal 98 disk... either upgrade or full. it doesn't matter... you can use it to cleanly install the Step-up version. If you use a 98 upgrade disk, you will need to browse to the win98 folder on the disk in order to help the installer find the qualifying product.