I really do not want to reformat because my burner is acting up and I can't backup anything.I have a PIII@600MHZ w/256 pc133 sdram,40Gig HDD.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Yes you can, but your system will run much better doing a clean install. In fact, I would zero out the drive, fdisk, and had xp format the disk to NTFS. What's wrong with your burner? You would loose everything installing XP over 98 anyway.

Zero disk program: http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Thanks.I figured that would be the best way.My burner will read a cd but will not burn anything.Just old like me I guess.
Thanks for the link too.

What burner program are you using, perhaps that is your problem? Also, maybe the disks you are using aren't ideal for the age of the burner. Maybe go on ebay and find a cheap burner.

Do an upgrade to XP, do not choose new installation. It should run good enough to atleast burn cd's to save your data. Right click on all the files you want to save in xp & send to your cd drive.Do that if your nero or other burning program doesn't work.

After you save everything i'd do a clean install. You will get the best results by deleting the partitions, repartition as a fat32 & format, then when installing xp choose new installation & convert to ntfs. After this 2nd install, install all your software over again & then run a defrag. It is also a good idea to bump up the virtual memory to like 4000.