When playing games recently, mainly Civilisation 3, many errors appear such as: ‘civ3conquests.exe has caused an invalid page fault. Beginning stack dump…’. In an attempt to fix the problems, I decided to upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP. However, during the installation a message appeared saying ‘C: drive is corrupted. Installation cannot continue. Press F4 to quit setup’. Could this be the source of my problems?

After years and years of using an operating system, junk starts to accumulate as a result of constantly accessing files and installing then uninstalling programs. This can take quite a toll on both the performance and stability of the computer system, which is why every few years it is always a good idea to wipe the computer and reinstall from scratch. The problems you are experiencing with Civilisation 3 could be caused by such issues. Regarding the problem with Windows XP installation, this would either be caused by the previous mentioned issue, or faulty hardware (such as a failing hard drive). You could try running a thorough ScanDisk session and Disk Defragmenter before running the Windows XP setup to see if the problem could be fixed by this avenue. I would recommend you start Windows in Safe Mode if you are going to run these utilities, since this will ensure there are fewer interruptions in the process than if running through Windows Normal mode. To start in Safe Mode, reboot the computer and press the F8 key when the ‘Starting Windows 98′¦’ message appears (just before the Windows splash screen). Select ‘Safe Mode’ from the Windows startup menu and press ENTER. When you are finished in Safe Mode, reboot the computer to start Windows in Normal mode.

However, running ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter will not fix the underlying problem of a messy and cluttered file system. Furthermore, installing Windows XP on such a base is likely to prove a bad idea, since your system performance will greatly suffer. Since your computer has Windows 98, I am guessing it has been installed for quite a while. I strongly recommend that you perform a clean reinstallation of Windows 98. Once you have performed this reinstallation, you can check the renewed performance of your machine and then decide whether you want to upgrade to Windows XP. To perform a clean reinstallation of Windows, make sure you have your full Windows 98 installation CD handy (the full version, not upgrade). Backup any data you want to keep (as you will lose all the data on your computer) then, using a boot disk, format your hard drive and reinstall Windows.