Knowledge Base

Limited Support for Cloned Installation of Windows 95/98/98 Second Edition

Article ID: 175584

Article Last Modified on 1/22/2007

Microsoft Windows 95
Microsoft Windows 98 Standard Edition
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition

This article was previously published under Q175584

SUMMARY

Microsoft provides several methods for properly installing Windows on a computer. A cloned installation, which is when an installed version of Windows is copied from one computer to another, is not a supported method of installing Windows.

MORE INFORMATION

During Windows Setup, information is collected about the specific hardware installed in your computer. This information may include Basic Input-Output (BIOS) information, hardware versions, system settings, media access control (MAC) addresses of installed network interface cards (NIC), and unique serial numbers assigned to specific devices.

According to the Plug and Play Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) specification section 6.1.2, a vendor can encode its hardware with a unique serial number. This number enables the BIOS and Windows to distinguish between multiple cards with the same vendor ID plugged into the same computer.

In a cloned installation, Windows may be able to detect new hardware and install the appropriate drivers, but due to the unknown nature of the computer on which Windows is cloned, Microsoft can only support this configuration on a reasonable effort basis.

Microsoft does support copying Windows from one hard disk to another hard disk in the same computer. For information about how to do so, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

166172 Duplicating Windows 95/98/98 Second Edition Installation to a New Hard Disk

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Keywords: dtssb kbinfo kbpolicy kbsetup KB175584