Thinkpads Forum

Recently attempted to upgrade the O/S on a 600E from Win98 to Win98 SE. The upgrade CD runs the system checks and attempts to go through the upgrade steps, but then the system returns a message that the upgrade failed due to existing virus protection on the system.

I uninstalled my AVG virus protection program, reviewed and modified any remaining lines in the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files, but the system still returns the same message. No other virus protection programs are runnng or resident on the system that I'm aware of. It won't be a disaster of biblical proportions if I'm not able to install the upgrade, but would like to try again - but am not sure what other options to avail myself of or to try. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Many years ago, I survived a Win98 to Win98SE upgrade. This is how I did it:

First, you don't want to upgrade from Windows 98 to 98SE with Norton installed, period. You need to uninstall not just the anti-virus, but the entire Symantec/Norton Suite.

This is a great page:
http://quarterbacks.org/Norton/

for how to totally uninstall SystemWorks. Follow it closely, espcially the part about running Norton DiskDoctor and WinDoctor from the CD-ROM when you are done.

Also, before upgrading from 98 to 98SE, you will want to remove as many external hardware drivers as you can. Trust me on this, many won't survive the upgrade and will leave you with a crippled system.

Disconnect every external device, including external mouse and especially remove all PC Cards.

Boot your Windows 98 computer into Safe mode. Go to Device Manager. It will show you every driver installed, including some you may have forgotten were there!

Remove all USB drivers and network adaptrs. Remove your external mouse drivers. Then, uninstall all your printer drivers.

After doing this, you should be able to flawlessly upgrade.

Bill.