UPGRADING/Dual-Boot/Migration - anything to avoid a clean start.help?

[Jeff W]

Hi - There have been some opinions posted that if I'm moving from
WIN98SE to XP, I should do a clean install. Like motherhood, this is
hard to argue against. But my WIN98SE machine is well-maintained (i
installed all SW myself, I keep it clean of unneeded or rogue apps, I
run adaware and scandisk daily, and Mcafee continually, etc)., it's
quite stable, and the time it would take to manually re-install ALL my
apps and migrate over all my data files, and make sure everything works,
would be measured in days. So I see two options

1) Upgrade - is this really such a bad idea for a sophisticated user?
Upgrade Advisor found virtually no problems, and from reading "...Inside
out", it looks like Msoft went to a lot of effort to make this work.

2) Setup a dual boot, and re-install the apps I use a lot (if they need
it). This seems less painful than starting over, and gives me an 'out'
if an old app won't run. The way I understand it - I don't need
multiple copies of the apps. Some (that don't rely much on the windows
directory or registry), will just run. Some might run but revert to
default values (since they're referencing a different O/S folder and
registry) and some may require re-installation (but the data files will
stay put). So this is sort of a new O/S (that I have to re-setup my
environment manually, a small pain), without re-installing ALL the apps.

2b) Are the migration tools mentioned in "...inside out" of any use
here? For example, XP hs one that will save settings of most apps
before the XP install, and then restore them (on the same machine)?
would that work with the dual-boot approach?

finally - if I set up dual-boot - will the WIN98SE setup suffer from
'software rot' - i.e., a year from now I'll try to boot and for some
reason it won't work?

thanks!
/j

 

[Don MI]

Hi - There have been some opinions posted that if I'm moving from
WIN98SE to XP, I should do a clean install. Like motherhood, this is
hard to argue against. But my WIN98SE machine is well-maintained (i
installed all SW myself, I keep it clean of unneeded or rogue apps, I
run adaware and scandisk daily, and Mcafee continually, etc)., it's
quite stable, and the time it would take to manually re-install ALL my
apps and migrate over all my data files, and make sure everything works,
would be measured in days. So I see two options

1) Upgrade - is this really such a bad idea for a sophisticated user?
Upgrade Advisor found virtually no problems, and from reading "...Inside
out", it looks like Msoft went to a lot of effort to make this work.

2) Setup a dual boot, and re-install the apps I use a lot (if they need
it). This seems less painful than starting over, and gives me an 'out'
if an old app won't run. The way I understand it - I don't need
multiple copies of the apps. Some (that don't rely much on the windows
directory or registry), will just run. Some might run but revert to
default values (since they're referencing a different O/S folder and
registry) and some may require re-installation (but the data files will
stay put). So this is sort of a new O/S (that I have to re-setup my
environment manually, a small pain), without re-installing ALL the apps.

2b) Are the migration tools mentioned in "...inside out" of any use
here? For example, XP hs one that will save settings of most apps
before the XP install, and then restore them (on the same machine)?
would that work with the dual-boot approach?

finally - if I set up dual-boot - will the WIN98SE setup suffer from
'software rot' - i.e., a year from now I'll try to boot and for some
reason it won't work?

thanks!
/j

If you upgrade and do not like the result you can always do a fresh install.
You have 30 days to activate Windows XP, so you can check out your system
and decide. You can also activate and then decide to do a fresh install.
At worst, you will need to use the telephone activation option.

Microsoft recommends the NTFS file system for Windows. Any partition to
change to NTFS cannot be accessed by Windows 98.

Don

 

[Jeff W]

Thanks - but you didn't really comment on the strength of a Dual-boot
option. In a stand-alone home environment, does NTFS really buy me
anything?
thanks
/j

 

[GTS]

The advice to do a clean install rather than an upgrade often has a
knee-jerk aspect (especially when bundled with the recommendations to
reformat the drive first. This makes no sense at all as there's nothing to
lose then by trying the upgrade.)
If your machine is clean and stable and you check out compatibility issues
first, the odds are excellent that an XP upgrade will work just fine. (It
did in the many upgrade installations I ran for clients.) A full backup is,
of course, always a wise precaution.

Dual boot installations (assuming you have an available partition) are
straightforward, but you will still have to reinstall most apps. Migration
tools can have some value, but limited. There's no reason the Win 98
partition should "rot" or fail later, though you'll find it becomes a chore
to keep both up to date as time goes on and you rarely use the 98 anymore.

 

[Don MI]

Thanks - but you didn't really comment on the strength of a Dual-boot
option. In a stand-alone home environment, does NTFS really buy me
anything?
thanks

I considered dual boot with Windows 98 a non-starter. As I do not
understand why you would consider a dual boot with Windows 98, I did not
comment. I you are considering a dual boot as a way to go back to Windows
98 if you have a problem, then I would suggest you consider an image program
such as Norton Ghost {or others}. Image your system prior to update to
Windows XP. If you have a major problem restore your image, solve the
problem and try again. The current versions are Norton Ghost Version 9
{Windows XP/2000} and Norton Ghost 2003 {All versions of Windows}. The
Norton Ghost Version 9 retail package contains both CDs.

A Google search will provide more than I can provide. NTFS permits greater
security. With NTFS you can set a fix cluster size independent of partition
size. With FAT32, the cluster size increases incrementally with partition
size resulting in more lost slack space. IMO your should use NTFS.

Don

 

[Jeff W]

The dual boot seems like best of both worlds - I get a clean XP install
but I don't have to fresh-install my apps, just re-install them (the
difference is that i retain all the settings in the program area (and
the system area with the migration wizard), and I don't have to worry
about moving the data in the program area. There's also a good chance
that many of the little apps that I have (which don't use any system
dlls or registry settings) will just work without re-install. With a
clean install I have to put everything on the machine again and port all
the data. With an upgrade I don't have a clean XP install. For one
computer, where I must still be able to run apps going back 15years (my
wife is a tax accountant), dual-boot keeps me from EVER having to worry
about the old apps running under XP. For my other systems, it gives me
what I described above, even if I never boot 98 again.

Since I have plenty of disk space, and don't need ACLs and other
inter-user protections (i expect to have the same admin logged in all
the time), I have yet to see any advantage from NTFS. I get the sense
most (all) of the advantage of NTFS becomes visable in a multi-user or
corporate environment.

make sense?

thanks
/j

 

[Jeff W]

thanks - i have a lot of 'small' shareware apps (directory size finder,
file/directory compare, financial calculator, putty, WSFTP, etc) which
I suspect use so little windows resources that they may not require
re-installation. but if they do, re-installation is a lot less painful
then fresh installation as I keep all my settings in the program area
(and in the system areas if I use the setting migration wizard).

seems like a better choice than a clean install, and possibly safer than
an upgrade. On one machine I have 15 years of old tax preparation apps
(my wife does it for a living) that have to still work, so dual-boot is
a no-brainer.

/j

 

[Don MI]

Yes.

With the long time frame that you are working in and since Microsoft will
stop supporting Windows 98 in a few years, you should consider imaging your
Windows 98 partition or at least have a CD with the Windows 98 updates you
have installed. www.lang.com has some suggestions for the latter.

Don