UPGRADING FROM PRE-3.1

UPGRADING FROM PRE-3.1

Never underestimate the ability of organizations to resist the need to upgrade technology. Despite a lack of support for several years, many companies (especially outside the continental United States) continue to operate pre-95 Windows platforms and are only now beginning the OS switchover. If you find yourself upgrading some really old PCs from Windows 3.0 to Windows 98, you may well get the following error message during Windows 98 setup.

Windows 98 Setup requires Microsoft Windows version 3.1 or later. Quit Windows and type Setup /D at the MS-DOS command prompt.

The fix is to do exactly as told; use the /d switch when using the setup command. This prompts Windows 98 to ignore the settings in the Win.ini and System.ini files when upgrading Windows. The downside is that as these files are not used in the upgrade, any applications that are installed and use settings from these files may well need to be reinstalled. Such is the price of getting with the 21st Century (or, at the very least, the late 1990s).