upgrade to Windows XP Home Ed from 98 First Ed

[stro]

Microsoft offers the Windows XP Home Edition upgrade on
their website for half the cost of the full version. I'm
running Windows 98 (not even the Second Ed) on my old PC
so I qualify for the upgrade. Can someone tell me about
this upgrade? Is it really a full version that you can
install on a newly reformatted hard drive, or does it
require you to already have loaded on your hard drive your
old Windows operating system before you can load XP Home
Ed? Thanks for your assistance.

 

[AK]

I upgraded a P3 500 MHz system from WIN ME to WIN XP HE, and it runs fine
with one problem - I cannot get task scheduler to work. However, the XP
system is incomparably more stable and I see no performance problems - maybe
even better performance. Whether your "old" system will be able to do this
probably depends on how old it is, and how much memory and disk you have.

There were a couple of things that were difficult about the installation:

1) You need to disable everything you can so that only the most basic and
essential services are running when you start the upgrade (you can get
information on how to do this at Microsoft's site, but I do not have the URL
for you - sorry - you'll need to poke around about looking for upgrade tips
on their site. Till I did this, I was unable to get it to complete the
installation.

2) The upgrade took about 12 hours to run on my machine, possibly (but not
definitely) because I had an old DVD ROM player rather than a fast CD-ROM
and it took a long time to access the CD-ROM. But, more likely, it simply
had to spend a lot of time hunting for new drivers for my old hardware, and
installing them, and checking to see which applications were not compatible.
Once I got past the initial queries that the set up procedure requires, I
simply let it run for hours and eventually it completed.

Rgds

Alan

 

[purplehaz]

The upgrade version will do clean installs and/or upgrade installs. To do a
clean install you will need your put in you win98 cd when asked during
install of xp to prove you are eligible to use the upgrade version. A
recovery cd will not work, has to be a real win98 cd.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

The Upgrade CDs (Home or Pro) will also do a "full install". The only thing
you will need is your original Windows 98 CD. The XP install will request
it to check several files, in order to check for the upgrade qualification
requirements. Then, it should complete succesfully.

BTW: Do not sell/discard/throw away/destroy your Windows 98 CD. You will
need it so as to be able to re-install your XP whenever you do a new fresh
install.

Y.

 

[purplehaz]

I upgraded a P3 500 MHz system from WIN ME to WIN XP HE, and it runs
fine with one problem - I cannot get task scheduler to work.
However, the XP system is incomparably more stable and I see no
performance problems - maybe even better performance. Whether your
"old" system will be able to do this probably depends on how old it
is, and how much memory and disk you have.

There were a couple of things that were difficult about the
installation:

1) You need to disable everything you can so that only the most basic
and essential services are running when you start the upgrade (you
can get information on how to do this at Microsoft's site, but I do
not have the URL for you - sorry - you'll need to poke around about
looking for upgrade tips on their site. Till I did this, I was
unable to get it to complete the installation.

A clean install would eliminate the need to turn things off to do the
install.

2) The upgrade took about 12 hours to run on my machine, possibly
(but not definitely) because I had an old DVD ROM player rather than
a fast CD-ROM and it took a long time to access the CD-ROM. But, more
likely, it simply had to spend a lot of time hunting for new drivers
for my old hardware, and installing them, and checking to see which
applications were not compatible. Once I got past the initial queries
that the set up procedure requires, I simply let it run for hours and
eventually it completed.

I have never seen XP take more than 2 hours to install, usually its done in
less than an hour. I can format my computer, install xp, install SP1,
install all updates, and install all my programs in just under 3 hours. No
way it should take 12 hours and if yours did I would imagine that possibly
something, although it may not be obvious, is wrong with the install.

Rgds

Alan

<snip>

 

[Guest]

On a side note:
Make sure you have enough system resources to run windows
(ram get atleast 256mb preferably 512) even though
microsoft says the minimum recommended is lower you will
have a very large headache from how slow it runs and some
programs may not even run.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Microsoft offers the Windows XP Home Edition upgrade on
their website for half the cost of the full version. I'm
running Windows 98 (not even the Second Ed) on my old PC
so I qualify for the upgrade. Can someone tell me about
this upgrade? Is it really a full version that you can
install on a newly reformatted hard drive, or does it
require you to already have loaded on your hard drive your
old Windows operating system before you can load XP Home
Ed?

The only difference is that the Setup in an Upgrade edition needs to be
provided of evidence of he existence of the 'qualifying product' (eg
WIn98). This can be satisfied by showing the Setup the Win98 CD in the
drive when it asks where Windows is. It must not though be one of the
OEM restore ones that has an image of the system as restored, rather
than a win98 folder containing .cab files.

Read Gary Woodruff's article on upgrading to XP at
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpupgrad.htm

Make sure that the machine is adequate in hardware - a Win98 machine
quite likely is not. You need more than the officially recommended
128MB of RAM and around a 400MHz or faster CPU to be worth while

 

[Jim Macklin]

You really should post more than just the subject line. But
if that is all you can say, I'll ask...
Is the hardware up to the task and are the applications in
need of updates to work with XP?

Run a scan at www.pcpitstop.com (look for XP readiness
test).


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