can XP upgrade w2k?

[Todd]

Hi All,

I have a customer with Windows 2000 Pro OEM SP2.
Will the XP Pro SP3 OEM disk perform an upgrade,
keeping intact all their stuff?

The customer does not want to loose all their
intellectual property, which is prodigious!
(The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

Many thanks,
-T

 

[Paul]

Hi All,

I have a customer with Windows 2000 Pro OEM SP2.
Will the XP Pro SP3 OEM disk perform an upgrade,
keeping intact all their stuff?

The customer does not want to loose all their
intellectual property, which is prodigious!
(The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

Many thanks,
-T

http://web.archive.org/web/20070103...rsite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_2kupgrade.asp

If you have your WinXP CD handy, see the "SETUPXP.HTM" file. It mentions the
Upgrade Advisor. If there is a problem, perhaps it will flag the upgrade
before you even begin.

"Run an upgrade report

An upgrade report tells you how your hardware and software will work
with Windows XP. The upgrade report is a quick and easy program that
you can run using the Windows XP CD. Here's how:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM drive.
2. When the Welcome menu appears, click Check system compatibility.
3. Then click Check my system automatically."

The upgrade advisor is also available as a separate download, but I don't
know if this would do any checks with regard to OEM versus retail versus upgrade.

( File size 33,309,528 bytes. MD5sum = f890ccbb8243c7e2b48a3b07ed141e0f )

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Utility/1.0/WXP/EN-US/UpgAdv.exe

This page has a few comments.

http://infocellar.com/winxp/oem-recover-retail.htm

"Upgrade with an OEM CD - sorry, it's Impossible

The OEM CD is designed to prevent this by checking for existence of Windows
on your PC. With an OEM disk, if you try to install WinXP over Win98-ME-2000,
etc. you will get a message that the upgrade is not allowed. OEM CD's do not
allow Upgrades !!! It states on the OEM CD "For Sale Only With A New PC".
"

"Burning an XP CD and editing the Pid

You can burn a CD and mix and match these values. For example, you could make a
Windows XP CD that acted like a Retail CD, yet accepted OEM keys. Or you can
leave them as is.
"

In practice, that second idea can be a bit problematic, as it's pretty
hard to figure out what would be valid PID values. When I got my CD, I
couldn't find my PID on the web. Different countries may have different
PID values (I vaguely remember this can be an issue if you move from
one country to another, install the OS, attempt to activate, and you
may be disallowed if your geolocation doesn't line up).

*******

I did a test in a Virtual Machine, and this is what happens when I try
to run the upgrade advisor on the WinXP OEM CD I have, on top of a
Win2K machine.

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3857/winxpoemon2k.gif

"Windows XP Setup does not support upgrading from Microsoft Windows 2000"

With a retail CD or upgrade CD that might be different.

Paul

 

[VanguardLH]

I have a customer with Windows 2000 Pro OEM SP2. Will the XP Pro SP3
OEM disk perform an upgrade, keeping intact all their stuff?

OEM installation media *never* does an upgrade. They always do a FULL
install (which means wiping a prior existing install of any OS if you
install in that same partition).

Since this is a "customer" then indicated is YOU are going to do the
migration (not an upgrade with the versions you listed). If you are
their computer wizard they employ to maintain their system, it's odd
that you don't know how OEM versions work. Since you are doing the
work, and since they are relying on you protecting the integrity of
their data, it's up to you to save that data elsewhere for later
restoration whether it be via a backup (file or image) of the OS
partition (since the other partitions won't be affected) or copying the
files elsewhere, like to optical media or a USB flash disk.

Retail version: full or upgrade install. Upgrade version: upgrade
install only. OEM: full install only.

The customer does not want to loose all their intellectual property,
which is prodigious! (The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

If the user doesn't want to lose their data, why aren't they doing
backups? If you don't backup then you deem your data as superfluous or
reproducible. Whether they migrate or not, you need to setup a backup
scheme to protect their investment in or their value of their data.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi All,

I have a customer with Windows 2000 Pro OEM SP2.
Will the XP Pro SP3 OEM disk perform an upgrade,
keeping intact all their stuff?

The customer does not want to loose all their
intellectual property, which is prodigious!
(The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

Three points:

1. See VanguardLH's reply; such an upgrade is not possible.

2. Windows 2000 is three generations old and XP is two generations
old. And by the end of this year, they will be four and three
generations old. Going from one so old to one only a little newer
makes almost no sense. If he wants to move forward, he should either
move to Windows 7 or wait for Windows 8 and move to it.

3. You say "the fear of loosing [sic] everything has kept them from
upgrading for years." If that's the case, especially with such an old
computer, he is playing with fire. He needs to make regular backups of
his "intellectual property," whether or not he moves to another
version of Windows. As has often been said, it's not a matter of
whether he will lose everything on the drive, it's a matter of when.

You might want to read this article on backup I've written: "Back Up
Your Computer Regularly and Reliably" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314

 

[Grammar Police]

The customer does not want to loose all their
intellectual property, which is prodigious!
(The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

Please learn the difference between loose and lose.

 

[Don Phillipson]

The customer does not want to loose all their
intellectual property, which is prodigious!
(The fear of loosing everything has kept them
from upgrading for years.)

-- Cheaply cured nowadays because you can get
terbyte drives for about $100 and utilities like
Western Digital's clone drives accurately.

 

[Todd]

http://web.archive.org/web/20070103...rsite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_2kupgrade.asp


If you have your WinXP CD handy, see the "SETUPXP.HTM" file. It mentions
the
Upgrade Advisor. If there is a problem, perhaps it will flag the upgrade
before you even begin.

"Run an upgrade report

An upgrade report tells you how your hardware and software will work
with Windows XP. The upgrade report is a quick and easy program that
you can run using the Windows XP CD. Here's how:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM drive.
2. When the Welcome menu appears, click Check system compatibility.
3. Then click Check my system automatically."

The upgrade advisor is also available as a separate download, but I don't
know if this would do any checks with regard to OEM versus retail versus
upgrade.

( File size 33,309,528 bytes. MD5sum = f890ccbb8243c7e2b48a3b07ed141e0f )

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Utility/1.0/WXP/EN-US/UpgAdv.exe


This page has a few comments.

http://infocellar.com/winxp/oem-recover-retail.htm

"Upgrade with an OEM CD - sorry, it's Impossible

The OEM CD is designed to prevent this by checking for existence of Windows
on your PC. With an OEM disk, if you try to install WinXP over
Win98-ME-2000,
etc. you will get a message that the upgrade is not allowed. OEM CD's do
not
allow Upgrades !!! It states on the OEM CD "For Sale Only With A New PC".
"

"Burning an XP CD and editing the Pid

You can burn a CD and mix and match these values. For example, you could
make a
Windows XP CD that acted like a Retail CD, yet accepted OEM keys. Or you
can
leave them as is.
"

In practice, that second idea can be a bit problematic, as it's pretty
hard to figure out what would be valid PID values. When I got my CD, I
couldn't find my PID on the web. Different countries may have different
PID values (I vaguely remember this can be an issue if you move from
one country to another, install the OS, attempt to activate, and you
may be disallowed if your geolocation doesn't line up).

*******

I did a test in a Virtual Machine, and this is what happens when I try
to run the upgrade advisor on the WinXP OEM CD I have, on top of a
Win2K machine.

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3857/winxpoemon2k.gif

"Windows XP Setup does not support upgrading from Microsoft Windows 2000"

With a retail CD or upgrade CD that might be different.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Wow! Thank you!

-T

 

[Todd]

If the user doesn't want to lose their data, why aren't they doing
backups?

New owner. Machine is a Pentium 3. Case still in ugly IBM white.
The new owner wants to start over on the hardware and install
backup at the same time.

 

[Todd]

From: "Todd" <[email protected]>

| Hi All,
|
| I have a customer with Windows 2000 Pro OEM SP2.
| Will the XP Pro SP3 OEM disk perform an upgrade,
| keeping intact all their stuff?
|
| The customer does not want to loose all their
| intellectual property, which is prodigious!
| (The fear of loosing everything has kept them
| from upgrading for years.)
|
| Many thanks,
| -T

LOL Win2K SP2
What happened to SP4 plus post service pack rollout ?

Not on Internet and does not care because it does exactly what
it is suppose to.

Chances are if the PC is that old that it still runs Win2K I would
suggest just removing the IDE drive and placing it in an IDE to USB v2.0
interface chassis and using it as an external drive on an existing
WinXP, Vista or Win7 computer. Albeit, you may have to take Ownership of
the data files.

If the customer has such a fear of loss of the intellectual data then I
would also suggest Ghosting the drive to another drive. This way tou
have TWO drives with the data.

We have been talking of a clozilla image.

Wait a second...
This person is your customer and YOU didn't know to do any of this and
you have to ask if Win2K is upgradeable to XP ?

** What a sad state of affairs :-( **

First off: Second off, have only worked for a few months
and he had to save up to call me back in after the expense of
me cleaning off a zillion viruses, including a boot sector virus,
from his server. (I saved every thing on his server.)

Thank you for the tips.

-T

 

[Todd]

Three points:

1. See VanguardLH's reply; such an upgrade is not possible.

2. Windows 2000 is three generations old and XP is two generations
old. And by the end of this year, they will be four and three
generations old. Going from one so old to one only a little newer
makes almost no sense. If he wants to move forward, he should either
move to Windows 7 or wait for Windows 8 and move to it.

His software does not work on W7. XP is as high as it goes.
Although I love new stuff, the new stuff has to work. I can
still get XP motherboard drivers for certain motherboards.
I think the new stuff may actually come in a Linux version.
Now that would increase his up time and reliability immensely,
especially the journaling hard drive and the ability to back up
and restore everything, not just most of everything. (I support
both Windows and Linux.) I am thinking removable eSata drives
with a clonezilla image of the hard drive on the backup drive
along with nightly backups. The clone would not have to be
update very often, as there will be no new anything installed
once it is up and running.

3. You say "the fear of loosing [sic] everything has kept them from
upgrading for years." If that's the case, especially with such an old
computer, he is playing with fire. He needs to make regular backups of
his "intellectual property," whether or not he moves to another
version of Windows. As has often been said, it's not a matter of
whether he will lose everything on the drive, it's a matter of when.

The old owners set this thing up and cherried it out. The new owner
is acting responsibly. That is why he called me in. I do not
know what was going through the old owner's brain. He never used
professionals and never backed up anything. What a mess to take
over. But the new owners are really sweet people and I love
to work for them.

I am afraid he may have to replace everything and start over fresh.
The software he is using costs around $20,000.00 and the migration,
if even possible is very much extra.

You might want to read this article on backup I've written: "Back Up
Your Computer Regularly and Reliably" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314

I am a backup whore. nuf said.

Thank you for the tips.
-T

 

[Todd]

Please learn the difference between loose and lose.

[pedant] Ooops! I can sure tell you do not work
for marketing! (I went to publik skol) [/pednat]

-T

 

[Todd]

Three points:

1. See VanguardLH's reply; such an upgrade is not possible.

Actually Paul's response was the best. Extraordinary!

 

[Todd]

From: "Todd" <[email protected]>


|
| New owner. Machine is a Pentium 3. Case still in ugly IBM white.
| The new owner wants to start over on the hardware and install
| backup at the same time.

Owner needs a new computer. a PIII computer will have limited RAM and
will be ill equiped for a modern OS as well as the age factor and the
greater chance of hardware failure and the inability to get replacements.

I concur. It is a scary situation.

 

[Todd]

Interesting "zillion viruses, including a boot sector virus"

Boot Sector Infectors are associated with FAT partitions and not NTFS.

I see them on NTFS hard drives all the time. Maybe I am confusing
a term or something. Kaspersky calls them "boot sector viruses"

What was the name of this Boot Sector Infector and was is it on Win9x/ME
computers using FATx partitioned drives ?

I am sorry. I do not remember.

There is no way there were "zillion viruses". If there was a true virus
then the chances are high to have *numerous* files infected but all by
the same virus. If this was not the case and there were numerous
instances of different malware then it is possible that the was a virus
but numerous different trojans.

I call everything a virus. I should learn to differentiate
so as to not confuse.

Please provide more information. Logs and or log snippets or actual
names of the malware seen on his system(s).
If it was a true virus or a worm then if it is not handled correctly
then there is a possibility of reinfection.

Trust me on this one. I am not going into the sorted details,
but I am absolutely sure there is no remaining infection.
Thank you for the offer though. If I were to write it up for you,
it would take me several hours. Just accept mystery on this one.

Cloning the original Win2K drive to another would be a good way to
ensure all the intellectual property (IP) won't be lost. This way you
can have one drive stored away for data protection and you can work with
the other drive as an external drive to a modern Operating System.

I was thinking the same thing. Clonezilla has a way to transfer over
the network. And, I am afraid to physically move the old computer,
as in turn it on its side, lest the hard drive seize up on me. And,
the CD-ROM drive is so old it won't read my CD-R disk to boot
Clonezilla. This is going to be fun.

The
idea of upgrading the OS is n ot a good idea. Chances are the hardware
won't handle a newer OS and then there is the age factor of the
hardware.

I can still get modern hardware to run on XP. I had a customer
this week have me clone her old XP to a new computer. Saved
all her stuff just as it was. Thought I have to point out
that this technique is not for the faint of heart.

Since the "client" cares so much about IP, then it is very
important to safe guard the data and protect it. This should include a
regiment of regular backups and plans for Disaster Recovery

Believe me, that is coming. I have the client complete ear.

Thank you for the tip!

-T

 

[Todd]

What software is this and have you actually tested the application using
the OS compatibility modes ?

I have to guard the customer confidence on this. Sorry.

I am on their support contract, so I am going to be doing a
lot of conferring in the next week. (I wanted to get to
it on Friday, but they are back east and had closed.)

I have worked with their support before and they are excellent.
The big obstacle is that my customer is not made out
of money. He had/has a lot of physical infrastructure he
has to fix too. The building was a bit of a mess as well.
(The old owners never fixed anything as far as I can tell.)
Lots of cost.

-T

 

[Todd]

Chances are if the PC is that old that it still runs Win2K I would
suggest just removing the IDE drive and placing it in an IDE to USB v2.0
interface chassis and using it as an external drive on an existing
WinXP, Vista or Win7 compute

I am chicken to actually move the thing. Drive bearing and all ...

 

[Todd]

You can use a surrogate computer to clone the drive. I often use my
Vista notebook this way. Use a USB v2.0 to SATA/IDE interface to add
the drive externally and use a USB hatrd disk to store the image. Once
I have the image I hook up the second drive and restore the image to
that drive.

Great advice. I was thinking of carefully removing the cover,
putting a Pata to Sata adapter on the hard drive, and cloning
the old drive to an image on a new computer. Once on the new
computer I can have a blast without affecting the old computer.

Do not try to clone the drive for a different computer. The hardware
will be too different and the result will be the new system will just
crash into a BSoD condition.

Not a problem. I know how to deal with it. Took me a while to
figure it out, but I have. I do it routinely.

As for your fear of drive bearings, you must overcome this SSAP.
Otherwise the drive could fail all by itself If that becomes the case
the client will have to send the drive out to a data recovery company
such as Kroll. Data Recovery servoices could cost $1,000 ~ $1,500.

Remember, data recovery costs MORE than prevention.

I concur. Things need to happen sooner than later.

Thank you for the tips!

-T

 

[Bob F]

His software does not work on W7. XP is as high as it goes.
Although I love new stuff, the new stuff has to work. I can
still get XP motherboard drivers for certain motherboards.
I think the new stuff may actually come in a Linux version.
Now that would increase his up time and reliability immensely,
especially the journaling hard drive and the ability to back up
and restore everything, not just most of everything. (I support
both Windows and Linux.) I am thinking removable eSata drives
with a clonezilla image of the hard drive on the backup drive
along with nightly backups. The clone would not have to be
update very often, as there will be no new anything installed
once it is up and running.

My experience was that Win XP worked fine on my W2K PC when I upgraded. The
problems seem to relate more to the newer Anti-Virus programs and such loading
them down. If the PC is not on-line, XP may work fine. Perhaps, clone the drive
to a new one, then do the upgrade on that

 

[000-222-000]

His software does not work on W7. XP is as high as it goes.
Although I love new stuff, the new stuff has to work. I can
still get XP motherboard drivers for certain motherboards.
I think the new stuff may actually come in a Linux version.
Now that would increase his up time and reliability immensely,
especially the journaling hard drive and the ability to back up
and restore everything, not just most of everything. (I support
both Windows and Linux.) I am thinking removable eSata drives
with a clonezilla image of the hard drive on the backup drive
along with nightly backups. The clone would not have to be
update very often, as there will be no new anything installed
once it is up and running.

Todd 32 and 64
a windows7 on win64 will no run a Software for a win32......
it the same with all Windows and Linuxs...
same as a Software win12 old DOS not will run win32...

For windows7 on win32 is not the same as windows7 on win64,
all is the Format,
and Some motherboard drivers or on a win64...

3. You say "the fear of loosing [sic] everything has kept them from
upgrading for years." If that's the case, especially with such an old
computer, he is playing with fire. He needs to make regular backups of
his "intellectual property," whether or not he moves to another
version of Windows. As has often been said, it's not a matter of
whether he will lose everything on the drive, it's a matter of when.

The old owners set this thing up and cherried it out. The new owner
is acting responsibly. That is why he called me in. I do not
know what was going through the old owner's brain. He never used
professionals and never backed up anything. What a mess to take
over. But the new owners are really sweet people and I love
to work for them.

I am afraid he may have to replace everything and start over fresh.
The software he is using costs around $20,000.00 and the migration,
if even possible is very much extra.

You might want to read this article on backup I've written: "Back Up
Your Computer Regularly and Reliably" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314

I am a backup whore. nuf said.

Thank you for the tips.
-T

 

[Tim Slattery]

Todd 32 and 64
a windows7 on win64 will no run a Software for a win32......

No. A 64-bit Windows operating system (XP, Vista or Win7) will run
32-bit or 64-bit software, it won't run 16-bit software. A 32-bit
windows system will run 32- or 16-bit software.

it the same with all Windows and Linuxs...

Not sure about Linux.

same as a Software win12 old DOS not will run win32...

No such thing as Win12. The older 16-bit systems (win3) won't run
32-bit software of course, they have no idea what it is.