UPGRADING WIN98SE TO WINXP HOME

[Lindsay Graham]

I bought a Win XP SP2 Home CD to upgrade from Win98SE. I now realise that I
cannot upgrade as the new CD is OEM. So I need to do a clean instal.

My 80GB hard drive has not been partitioned, and I see no need to partition
it when installing XP. From reading the instal instructions, and
researching past newsgroup posts, it is not clear to me whether the clean
instal will reformat the existing hard drive when it is not being
partitioned. Although I've backed up everything I can think of, I'd rather
not have to re-instal all of the programs that I use.

Can I do a clean instal without my hard disk being formatted?

Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia

 

[John John]

You will have to format the drive and reinstall everything.

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I bought a Win XP SP2 Home CD to upgrade from Win98SE. I now realise
that I cannot upgrade as the new CD is OEM.

That's correct. Can you possibly return the OEM CD and get an Upgrade CD
instead? They are usually very close in price.

Besides the Upgrade being more versatile (it can do either an upgrade or a
clean installation), it comes without the very big restriction that the OEM
CD has: the OEM CD's license ties it permanently to the first computer it's
installed on. It may never be moved to another computer or sold or given
away by itself. For that reason, I always recommend the Upgrade version over
the OEM one.

So I need to do a clean
instal.
My 80GB hard drive has not been partitioned,

Yes, it has. To partition a drive is to create *one or more* partitions on
it. You can not use a drive unless it has been partitioned. So your drive
has been partitioned, and has a single partition on it, presumably called
C:, It's a FAT32 partition.

and I see no need to
partition it when installing XP.

Again, there's no choice. You have to partition it, but you can create just
a *single* partition. Make it NTFS.

From reading the instal
instructions, and researching past newsgroup posts, it is not clear
to me whether the clean instal will reformat the existing hard drive
when it is not being partitioned.

When you do the clean installation, the act of partitioning (creating a
single partition) and formatting are the same.

Although I've backed up everything
I can think of, I'd rather not have to re-instal all of the programs
that I use.

Sorry, you have no choice. You *have* to reinstall everything. All programs,
except for a rare trivial one, have
many associated files and entries pointing to them within Windows, in the
registry and elsewhere. So if you reinstall Windows (whether the same
version or a different one), you also have to reinstall all your programs.

Can I do a clean instal without my hard disk being formatted?

No. "Clean installation" means formatting.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

All drives must be partitioned before they are formatted. You can have just
one partition though that will encompass all the available drive space. Once
partitioned the drive is formatted and then installation of the operating
system begins. Because you re doing a clean install you will need to
reinstall other software after the installation completes. This is the
unfortunate reality of doing a clean install.
See here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I bought a Win XP SP2 Home CD to upgrade from Win98SE. I now realise that I
cannot upgrade as the new CD is OEM. So I need to do a clean instal.

My 80GB hard drive has not been partitioned, and I see no need to partition
it when installing XP. From reading the instal instructions, and
researching past newsgroup posts, it is not clear to me whether the clean
instal will reformat the existing hard drive when it is not being
partitioned. Although I've backed up everything I can think of, I'd rather
not have to re-instal all of the programs that I use.

Regardless of your wishes, you'll still have to reinstall all of the
applications, if you wanted to use them with WinXP.

Can I do a clean instal without my hard disk being formatted?

No. By definition, a "clean installation" requires the formatting of
the hard drive as the first step.



--

Bruce Chambers

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[Lindsay Graham]

Thanks for the helpful (and so prompt) responses, guys.

During the install process, WinXP Setup gives me 4 options for file systems:
Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)
Format the partition using the NTFS file system
Convert the partition to NTFS
Leave the current file system intact (no changes)

Given that I want to change the existing FAT32 file system to NTFS, which of
the first 3 options should I use? And what are the differences between
those 3 options?

I could find no guidance on these options on the Microsoft site or by
searching on the internet (ie, must be there somewhere, but I gave up after
30 minutes!).

Lindsay Graham

 

[John John]

Use the second option. The first option (Quick) formats the disk NTFS
but does not check the disk for errors. The second option checks the
disk for errors then formats it NTFS, using this option typically the
format happens at about the 98% mark, that is why interrupting these
formats before the last stage usually leaves the disk unchanged. The
third option would only be used if you wanted to preserve the
information on a FAT32 disk. It is only to be used if you have
absolutely no other choice, it can leave the disk structure in a less
than desirable state.

John

 

[Lindsay Graham]

Thanks, John -- the second option is being used as we speak.

But that leaves 2 questions in my mind:
1. Why on earth didn't MS include explanations along these lines of the 4
options listed? Not very helpful on MS's part -- but a bit late to complain
now, I know.
2. More importantly, your explanation of the third option implies that it
is possible to do a clean install without deleting all existing files. But
the answers to my initial question were unanimously that a clean install
meant losing all data on the drive -- am I misreading something?

Lindsay

 

[John John]

Thanks, John -- the second option is being used as we speak.

But that leaves 2 questions in my mind:
1. Why on earth didn't MS include explanations along these lines of the 4
options listed? Not very helpful on MS's part -- but a bit late to complain
now, I know.

It would be nice but if they were to do that for every possible setup
option it would make for a lot of extra stuff on the distribution media.
The setup routine for NT operating systems was developed a loooong
time ago! It was developed in the days when CD-ROMS weren't even around
or if they were they were just starting to appear. Bootable CD-ROM were
not exactly the norm and many motherboards couldn't boot them. To
launch the setup routine floppy diskettes often had to be used, NT 3.x &
4.0 needed 3 floppies to launch, Windows 2000 needs 4 floppies and
Windows XP needs 6! Adding unnecessary help files to the "Text Mode"
portion of the setup routine would just make for even more floppies to
stick in the machine! Nowadays the lowly floppy is mostly forgotten by
many people but Microsoft has had to keep it in mind when designing
their operating systems, as much as possible new operating systems have
to have a certain level of backward compatibility with older hardware.
Vista has now moved on and pretty well done away with the the floppy
diskette.

2. More importantly, your explanation of the third option implies that it
is possible to do a clean install without deleting all existing files. But
the answers to my initial question were unanimously that a clean install
meant losing all data on the drive -- am I misreading something?

Clean install means to format the hard disk and install on a "clean"
disk, all the files on the disk will be lost. The option to convert
FAT32 to NTFS is there if you want to upgrade Windows 9x and use the
more secure NTFS file system, converting the file system after
installation leaves NTFS permissions in an absolute mess! If you want
to upgrade W9x and use NTFS, permission wise it is better to convert
before upgrading. If you want to otherwise keep other files on your
FAT32 disk you can convert the disk and do a quasi clean install by
simply installing NT to a new folder. All the useless clutter from the
previous operating system will still be on the drive after the
installation is complete but NT will be independent of it. It is not
generally a recommended way to install Windows. Converting FAT32 to
NTFS can leave the disk with smaller than wanted cluster size and it
will leave the Master File Table somewhere in the middle of the disk,
that can have a negative effect on disk performance.

John