[PCTECH] W98 to W2K upgrades

[Tom Liotta <qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Though I'll accept all suggestions, this is more a rant than a request 
for help.

My wife has used a PC we've had for some 6 years. She's no computer 
person by any means, but has gotten well into e-mail, browsing and 
similar PC functions. Spends nearly as much time as I do at her keyboard.

Nothing fancy... 333Mhz, 256MB. Upgraded from the original W95 to W98 SE 
a couple years ago when I had a spare license. Another spare license 
brought the attempt to upgrade to W2K this weekend. Upgrades were 
motivated by desires for more stability.

Start the upgrades by general cleanup -- everything from running a 
couple rounds of RegClean to removing unused programs and apps to disk 
defrag. Common stuff. The primary concern was to make the newly upgraded 
PC look as similar to the previous version as possible while getting the 
benefits of an OS upgrade. She has the apps she uses and knows; they do 
exactly what she wants them to do and there's zero need for new bells 
and whistles. (An ideal 'user'.)

Now the rant...

The W2K upgrade does _not_ like the ATI 3D RAGE PRO AGP display adapter. 
I have no idea why not. When it boots, the logon window appears; and 
approx one minute later, the system crashes hard with a 
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error in AtiBt829.sys, does a memory dump 
and reboots.

Shouldn't be a big deal. Search for info in various forums, search for 
W2K drivers, etc. I found a few, downloaded, transferred on floppy, used 
Safe Mode to work some replacements, but clearly not to the point of 
making a difference. Go to microsoft.com for Hardware Compatibilty List 
issues or driver updates. But...

Though there seem to be a few issues with AtiBt829.sys and W2K upgrades, 
there are apparently _zero_ sets of suggestions on exactly what to do. 
No info anywhere on how to actually update the drivers.

Microsoft Windows Update is the real knee-slapper in this case. Of 
course, there's no way to connect to Windows Update with the PC in 
question; I need to connect with a different PC in order to download 
what Microsoft recommends in this case... and there does seem to be a 
recommended fix, there are references on microsoft.com and links to 
follow that lead to Windows Update for the fix.

[THE rant:] But when I connect with another PC -- which has a different 
display adapter and therefore has no need for no stinkin' AtiBt829.sys 
update --  Windows Update provides no way that I can find to get to the 
recommended fix. Aaaaggghhhh. All links go to Windows Update.

Meanwhile, there's Mrs. Me tapping her foot in the background... "When 
can I have my computer back?"

Fortunately, Safe Mode shows that all the e-mail archives and documents 
and photos and everything else are still intact.

Sigh.

Tom Liotta