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In the Forums... |
Posted: April 15, 2000 Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Installing Windows 98 Continued... When you are done installing Windows 98, go ahead and tweak out the system and download any available updates from Windows Update. While you are at it, take the time to set the swap file up properly (permanent/unchanging size), and make sure you put it on the partition/drive that you are going to be installing Win2k onto. If there are other files on that drive/partition already (if you were using it as a backup), move the files off the drive before setting it up. The reason for this will be explained later. You may also want to install and set up all of your applications and install all of the up to date drivers you downloaded before you continue on – just make sure you make note of the exact settings you used to install the applications so you can repeat the installation in Win2k without having to have two copies of the software on your system – that’d just suck. Also, before you continue on, run a defrag and after that a scandisk on your C drive – it will save you time and effort in the long run. Installing Windows 2000 (finally…) You can install Windows 2000 from within Windows 98 using the autorun pop-up screen or the setup program on the disk. There are a couple of things you should keep in mind when you are installing: - The version of Windows 2000 you have will determine your installation options. It is important to leave as many of your options open as possible, so wherever you can, choose Advanced, Expert, More info, etc. Use some common sense for eliminating pieces of the OS you will never use, and try to set it up so you have to do as little configuring as possible. - Make sure you install Windows 2000 to its own partition. I made the mistake on my original install of thinking that they could safely inhabit the same partition. Boy was I wrong... Windows 2000 will thoughtlessly install over some of the programs in your Program Files directory and make it very hard to restore your original Win98 installation (it overwrote System Information… ugh). After the Installation You’ve gotten your account set up, and you’ve set up the administrators account as well (if you are smart, you’ll make your private account an admin as well – this saves time in the long run and won’t cause problems unless you mess up bad. If you are concerned with that, though, just make sure you are logged in as the admin whenever you install anything or change any settings…). Then, go ahead and log on to Windows Update and download any applicable security updates and so on. Next, set up your pagefile to be the same size as your swapfile on Win9x and aim it at the same drive as well. While you are at it, if you haven’t already, install all of the driver updates you downloaded before continuing. Customizing your Installation There is a trick that was sent into me by a kind reader that I thought I should pass on. There is a way to expand the list of items that you find in the Add/Remove Components section of the control panel. Apparently, this was discovered by one of the guys over at Planetenews – a French gaming site (the guy was French too). Here are the digs: Open the file sysoc.inf into Notepad. You will find it in your %winntdir%\inf subdirectory (the directory may be hidden if you have trouble finding it – you can use Folder Options => View to change that setting). In the components section of the inf file, you will see a whole bunch of hide properties on a bunch of components. Go ahead and delete the hide attributes on all of them (make sure you get the extra comma too). Make sure you get all of the hide properties in the entire file and then save it. You should find that you now have a bunch more options you can remove if you want. |
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