98 to XP upgrade

[Shawn]

I currently have a Compaq Presario 5225 that came with a
380 mhz AMD/K6 processor, 10 kb hard drive and has been
upgraded to 192 mb ram. I recently added a GeForce FX5200
128 mb vidio card and a RW-CD drive. I was considering
upgrading to XP and had a few questions. My computer came
with Microsoft word installed on it. Will I lose this
program with the XP upgrade or is there a way to keep it.
I meet all the minumum requirements for XP but am curious
if I should expect many problems with a five year old
machine.

 

[purplehaz]

If you do a clean install you will lose it. If you do an upgrade install you
will keep it. Of course this would be word 97 or newer. If your word is
older is may not even run on xp.
I would not install xp on this machine as it will run extremely slow. Much
to slow for me to deal with, maybe its ok for you, but it will be slow. XP
really wants 500mhz and 256mb ram, IMHO. I would just think about xp when
its time to get a new computer(which probably isn't far off unfortunately).

 

[elie]

hi shawn,

Word will be lost if you do the upgrade. to reinstall it
you need the CD of microsoft Office.

it looks like your machine can handle windows XP, but the
fact that you added a GeForce FX5200 128 mb vidio card
means that you use this PC for games. if this is the
case the performance of your machine will diminish a
lot. I will choose windows XP over win 98 any day BUT to
play games i have a 1GB BOX with 512MB RAM. however if
you will use it for internet access and typing documents,
then it will do fine but it will still be slower than Win
98.

regards
Elie

 

[Bill]

All of your existing software will remain so long as you
UPGRADE. MOST if it will still work. Some of the older
software might not, but your version of Word will still
function.

 

[Malke]

All of your existing software will remain so long as you
UPGRADE. MOST if it will still work. Some of the older
software might not, but your version of Word will still
function.

But please don't count on having a trouble-free *upgrade* instead of
doing a clean install. Whenever you are going to another operating
system, there will be glitches. Be prepared. Back up your data and have
cd's for all your programs. Beforehand, download and scan with the XP
Upgrade Advisor (get from Microsoft's website). You have a very
proprietary little machine that may not run XP well. There may not be
drivers for Compaq's proprietary hardware. You won't have a lot of room
on the hard drive for XP and applications and data, and so on.

Malke