OS Upgrade

[Howard]

The Win 98 OS on my friends 3-4 year old PC has become hopelessly
corrupted and I was going to help him upgrade. There is enough RAM
and processor speed to run Win XP, though I think the processor is a
P2, if I remember correctly.

I was going to replace his 14 GB HD with a new 40 GB drive and load
Win XP. Assuming that the BIOS can be set to boot from a CD, are
there any other BIOS or other issues to be wary of in an 'older'
machine such as this?

Howard

 

[philo]

The Win 98 OS on my friends 3-4 year old PC has become hopelessly
corrupted and I was going to help him upgrade. There is enough RAM
and processor speed to run Win XP, though I think the processor is a
P2, if I remember correctly.

I was going to replace his 14 GB HD with a new 40 GB drive and load
Win XP. Assuming that the BIOS can be set to boot from a CD, are
there any other BIOS or other issues to be wary of in an 'older'
machine such as this?

Howard

as long as the bios recognizes the harddrive ok (which i'm sure it will)
you should have no problems

even if the bios cannot be set to boot from the cd (unlikely)
you can still do a floppy startup

btw: to run XP i'd advise a 450mhz cpu and 256 megs of ram as a minimum

however, even with half those specs...XP will still run...
but very slow!

 

[stacey]

The Win 98 OS on my friends 3-4 year old PC has become hopelessly
corrupted and I was going to help him upgrade. There is enough RAM
and processor speed to run Win XP, though I think the processor is a
P2, if I remember correctly.

I was going to replace his 14 GB HD with a new 40 GB drive and load
Win XP. Assuming that the BIOS can be set to boot from a CD, are
there any other BIOS or other issues to be wary of in an 'older'
machine such as this?

First the bios may or may not see that big a drive. Many won't. Actually
will be shocked if it does! Second unless you are planning on doing a bunch
of tweaking for them, expect a BIG slowdown in performance. Why not just
reinstall 98SE and save them $$$$? IMHO if you are going to buy a hard
drive 9and a controller card when the bios won't see the drive) and a copy
of XP, you're getting close to the price of a cheap new PC!

 

[DaveW]

His BIOS probably will not recognize a 40 GB harddrive as such. Too old.

 

[Ancra]

The Win 98 OS on my friends 3-4 year old PC has become hopelessly
corrupted and I was going to help him upgrade. There is enough RAM
and processor speed to run Win XP, though I think the processor is a
P2, if I remember correctly.

I was going to replace his 14 GB HD with a new 40 GB drive and load
Win XP. Assuming that the BIOS can be set to boot from a CD, are
there any other BIOS or other issues to be wary of in an 'older'
machine such as this?

A PII ? (Sigh) Just reinstall Win98.
3-4 year old? Did they still sell PIIs then?


ancra