Upgrade from 98SE

[Endulini]

Hi All,

I'm considering upgrading my 98SE to XP but was wondering how my machine
would cope with it. It's an old Pentium III 500MHz with 640MB and a 9GB hard
drive (around 4 GB free space). I understand there might be an issue with
the BIOS but that aside will it run ok or is it likely to be horrendously
slow?

Thanks

 

[Tom Willett]

System Requirements:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

| Hi All,
|
| I'm considering upgrading my 98SE to XP but was wondering how my machine
| would cope with it. It's an old Pentium III 500MHz with 640MB and a 9GB
hard
| drive (around 4 GB free space). I understand there might be an issue with
| the BIOS but that aside will it run ok or is it likely to be horrendously
| slow?
|
| Thanks
|
|

 

[Bob Harris]

I successfully upgraded and old Gateway, Pentium II, 450Mhz, 386 Meg RAM.
But, first I replace the hard drive, going form 10 Gig to 40 Gig.

4 Gig free might be enough to install XP, but it will soon be inadeqaute to
update XP and/or to have a decent swap file or a hibernation file, not to
mention other programs for XP, which all seem to be larger than their 98
counterparts. Upgrade your hard drive. If you get a retail upgrade kit, it
should come with a bootable CD containing software to prepare the drive and
clone everyhting from the old one to the new one.

If you choose to upgrade the hard drive, consider making two paritions, one
for XP and programs, and one for your personal data. Then, if you ever need
to re-install XP, you will have a chance of not losing all data.

XP home edition ran a bit slower than 98, but it was also far more stable,
and I was happy to make that trade-off.

However, before upgrading, please run the free Microsoft Upgrade Advisor.
It will perform a hardware and software compatibility check, and flag
issues, and even make suggestions ot treat them.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/advisor.mspx

Common problems are antivirus and CD burning software. Uninstall all of
these, then reinstall after the XP ungrade. Of course, install
XP-compatible versions. Also, be sure to not have any encrypted files.
This software seems to be easily damaged by the XP upgrade.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi All,

I'm considering upgrading my 98SE to XP but was wondering how my machine
would cope with it. It's an old Pentium III 500MHz with 640MB and a 9GB hard
drive (around 4 GB free space). I understand there might be an issue with
the BIOS but that aside will it run ok or is it likely to be horrendously
slow?

Thanks

I'm afraid, given those specifications, that the the word "glacial"
comes to mind, and you'll want to upgrade to a larger hard drive if
you're planning on installing many applications.

Acceptable performance is, of course, a matter of personal opinion
and depends entirely upon what *you* expect to do with your computer. If
all you want to do is play WinXP's built-in games, send and receive
simple emails, browse the Internet (while avoiding the more "ornamental"
web sites) etc., such a machine may well meet your needs. If, however,
you plan to take advantage of WinXP's multimedia capabilities, play
graphic-intensive games, or do advanced word or data processing, such a
machine would probably be woefully inadequate.

If you turn off all of WinXP GUI eye-candy, it will still be very
slow, but it might be usable for simple word processing, email,
web-browsing, etc. It won't be any good for graphics-intensive
applications, and most newer games. (During the public preview period,
I tested WinXP on a 500 MHz machine with 256 Mb of RAM, and it was much
slower than I like.)

To help improve WinXP's performance on older machines:

1) Right-click the Task Bar > Properties > Start Menu, ensure "Classic
Start menu" is selected.

2) Right-click an empty spot on the Desktop > Properties > Themes >
select "Windows Classic."

3) Right-click My Computer > Properties > Performance > Settings >
Visual Effects, ensure "Adjust for best performance" is selected.


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi All,

I'm considering upgrading my 98SE to XP but was wondering how my
machine would cope with it. It's an old Pentium III 500MHz

That will be slow, but usable.

with 640MB

That's good. Many people running Windows 98 have much less than that and
often not enough for XP. You should be fine in that regard.

and a 9GB hard drive (around 4 GB free space).

You're going to eat up a good chunk of that 4GB immediately, and will have
very little left. You might want to upgrade the size of the drive.
Fortunately drives are very inexpensive these days. You can buy an 80GB
drive for around $60 USA (sometimes less, on sale)

I understand there
might be an issue with the BIOS

That's unlikely.

but that aside will it run ok or is
it likely to be horrendously slow?

It certainly won't be a speed demon, but it won't be so slow as to be
unusable either. My wife ran XP on less (a 400MHz PII with 256MB of RAM) for
several years; her uses were relatively light (E-mail, web, some light word
processing), but she was satisfied with it.

Unless you run particularly demanding applications, it should be OK. But
I'd upgrade the drive.