Hi, Ginga.
I've never regretted upgrading from Win2K to WinXP Pro on the day it came
out in 2001! ;<) But I do very little gaming and don't have a network or
other users on my computer.
If your WinXP CD-ROM is a current version, it will have SP2 integrated into
it and the whole process should take no more than an hour or two, including
formatting your HD. It's a good idea to unplug unnecessary peripherals
before you begin. Especially any HD with an Active (bootable) primary
partition on it; if Setup detects an Active partition on any HD, it will let
that keep drive letter C:, assigning another letter (G:?) to your System
(and Boot?) volume - and that can't be changed without starting over.
If you upgrade from Win2K, your boot folder will inherit the prior name
(\WinNT?), rather than WinXP's default, \Windows. Neither the boot folder
name nor the drive letter will matter to WinXP, but it will almost certainly
confuse you - and all the applications you will install that expect to put
their files on Drive C:.
Upgrades from Win2K to WinXP usually go smoothly, since they both are on the
NT platform, as opposed to upgrades from Win9x/ME, which require all new
drivers and sometimes new versions of software. But a clean install,
including a reformat, clears out the accumulated deadwood and garbage,
making it worth the time to reinstall apps and restore data, in many cases.
RC