I am sure this has been asked before, but can't seem to find the info through searching. According to MS you can't upgrade Windows ME to Windows 2000, but I thought perhaps somebody has come up with a workaround besides doing a clean install, and therefore having to re-install all the other applications.

Any pointers to articles etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

If your hard disk is large enough, perhaps you could install W2K on a separate partition and dual boot. Upgrading leaves you open to too many driver conflicts.

In my opinion do not go the way of upgrade for any OS. It is quite steep downhill.
Do a clean install and save your self million forum threads about problems and a clean install eventually anyway

There is'nt any supported way and no hacks that I am aware of.
ME is not a business OS and therefore not support by Microsoft im upgrading to a Business OS.

The fact that you wish to do such a thing suggests to me that you do not have proper backups and do not know exactly where you giles are located. It would benefit YOU far more greatly if your organized your files before moving to a new OS. This makes things easier by far.

DOS,
Of course Windows 98 could not really be considered a business OS, but I have done many upgrades to Windows 2000 from Win98. The deal is that re-installing applications can take several hours, and my time is valuable. I was hoping that there was some hack to fix this, but I suppose clean install is the only option. I really dislike Windows ME in a severe way.

Thanks

The time you spend (waste?) backing up your files to do a clean install would probably be spent chasing down problems after doing an upgrade so why take the chance?

huh?

My guess is, MS was so uncharacteristicaly embarressed about W98, they were sure everybody would leave it at earliest possible time.

About ME, They now it is just a sack of sh*t. So they are playing dunno, haven't seen it and disowning it big time

I have "heard" somewhere that it can be done. From the pieces I "heard" it involves booting into dos mode (with 98SE bootdisk) and deleting or renaming certain files i.e. win.com?, any boot files that hold ME version coding, etc. Also you had to go into HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ and delete currentversion key and maybe even Windows Key. Don't try it, I doubt it works, if you do back up everything.

Well you might as well do a clean install since it will take about the same amount of time...

It can be done, since I have done it, I used my OEM Windows 2000 Professional CD, no integrated Service Pack. I just popped the CD in and it then asked me if I wanted to upgrade, I clicked yes and off it went. Now doing this is not recommended since alot of things get messed up. Most of my applications and games worked ok, but the system was wonky and unstable, most of the icons have no icon pictures since Me has a few different icons then Windows 98 did and Me also has icons in different files thus Windows 2000 uses 98 as a reference and thus all the icons are either wrong or non-existent, some of the icons even stay in 16-color mode even in high color displays. There is something wrong with the start menu too, when you go to the advanced properties for the Taskbar, you will see all of the Windows 2000 options for displaying favorities, scrolling programs, etc, but you will see the Windows ME options as well. The control panel is messed up and I couldn't access the System from there. I'll stop rambling now, just do a clean install, Upgrading Windows ME to Windows 2000 = Windows 2000 with a ME kernel.

Trust me, it's far easier to just do a clean install and reinstall the programs you use. Every machine I have done a 98 to 2000 upgrade has had its installation crap out after a few weeks to a month.