I received a new Dell computer for the holidays and am not happy with the Windows XP Home operating system that came on it. I have a hard drive that has Windows 98SE and would prefer to have it on the system. What is the best procedure to follow to change the operating system on a preconfigured one. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Hi. Ill just give you my 2 scents.
Putting a hard drive with a operating system already installed on it into a new computer with a different mother board and different cards is usually not a good idea. It probably will work in the beginning, but you will run into hardware conflicts later on. The best thing to do if you have the windows 98 cd. Is to reinstall it on your second hard drive. To do this, first connect your 2nd hard drive to your computer with Winxp on it and transfer all of your imortant data to the xp hd. Then disconnect the xp hd from your comp (leave the 98 hd connected), use fdisk or something else to format the 98 hd, (re)install 98 and all your dirvers on it. Then reconnect the xp hd and transfer all your important data to the 98 hd. ( if your comp keeps booting xp, try to select the 98 hd from the boot menue or go to the bios and make the 98 hd your 1st hd, or make it master on the jumpers and on the cable)
I hpe this helps. :)

I agree with what Ali said. The drive will most probably not work because of hardware conflicts.

To install win 98 you would need reformat the drive and that means making sure you have allthe correct hardware drivers.

I am curious about what you don't like XP. Its clearly the best OS Microsoft has come out with yet.

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Just read Fred's comments and I have to make sure the facts are presented. While its true that XP tries to make it easier for users, it doesn't take any control away from users. As for bugs in IE 6, most people recommend IE 6 as the most stable version. I've been using it since before XP without any problems.