Upgrading from Win98

[msnews.microsoft.com]

I want to upgrade from Win98 First to XP but have been warned by others that
my PC might not be able to provide the speed/resources.

I have a Dell PII 400 mhz with 256 megs of memory. The MSFT recommendations
for an upgrade are less than what my PC offers.

Has anyone tried this and is it feasible?

 

[Stephan]

I just installed xp on a new machine, a p4 1.7ghz
I use 500mhz p2s at work.
I don't recommend you do it.
at the very least, xp is very video intensive.
I don't think you will like waiting for the graphics to keep up.



I want to upgrade from Win98 First to XP but have been warned by others that
my PC might not be able to provide the speed/resources.

I have a Dell PII 400 mhz with 256 megs of memory. The MSFT recommendations
for an upgrade are less than what my PC offers.

Has anyone tried this and is it feasible?

 

[Malke]

I just installed xp on a new machine, a p4 1.7ghz
I use 500mhz p2s at work.
I don't recommend you do it.
at the very least, xp is very video intensive.
I don't think you will like waiting for the graphics to keep up.



I want to upgrade from Win98 First to XP but have been warned by
others that my PC might not be able to provide the speed/resources.

I have a Dell PII 400 mhz with 256 megs of memory. The MSFT
recommendations for an upgrade are less than what my PC offers.

Has anyone tried this and is it feasible?

I agree with Stephan. Leave well enough alone. Here's the link to the XP
Upgrade Advisor, which you should *definitely* run if you decide to go
with XP anyway:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

But I really think your computer is best suited to Win98SE, just the way
you have it.

Malke

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I want to upgrade from Win98 First to XP but have been warned by
others that my PC might not be able to provide the speed/resources.

I have a Dell PII 400 mhz with 256 megs of memory. The MSFT
recommendations for an upgrade are less than what my PC offers.

My wife runs Windows XP on exactly the same configuration. It's
certainly not a speed demon, but it is acceptable.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

You could try downloading and running the Upgrade Advisor:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

(It's a bit large if you're limited to a dialup modem.)

Assuming that it's compatible, you may have to turn off some of the XP
graphics features to get acceptable performance. (That stuff just makes the
interfaces look slicker; you won't need it.) XP isn't as friendly towards
"legacy" interfaces (especially ISA) as was Win9x, but they are still
supported. Some peripheral manufacturers have never bothered to produced
drivers for XP (or Win2k), so make sure that all of the devices you wish to
keep have XP drivers available. (Some peripherals, like older HP Deskjet
printers, have drivers built into XP that will allow them to be used, but
they are highly simplified compared to the previous drivers.)

I haven't run XP on a PII, but it may be worth the risk.

One caution: while XP is supposed to be an NT variant that is finally ready
for mass-market use, it's still more complex to configure than Win9x. There
are many settings choices in XP; so many, in fact, that there is a transfer
wizard to allow you to copy settings when you switch to a new machine.

Good luck.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be altered to avoid spam. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Rodger]

If you do install, recommend you learn how to turn off all the bells and
whistles of the XP GUI. Go to the good old GUI and you should have some
improvement in performance over the Graphics Intensive GUI.

Rodger

 

[Kelly]

Hi,

In addition: Run the PC Readiness Test
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

 

[Alex Nichol]

I want to upgrade from Win98 First to XP but have been warned by others that
my PC might not be able to provide the speed/resources.

I have a Dell PII 400 mhz with 256 megs of memory. The MSFT recommendations
for an upgrade are less than what my PC offers.

That should run adequately - especially if you have a recent graphics
card. Applications about as in Win98; multimedia about the same - ie
rather limited unless the video card handles MPEG in hardware. I ran
the Betas on a P III 450 and 192 MB RAM and it did quite well. It pays
to turn off some (about the top ten) of the Visual effects in Control
Panel - System - Advanced - Performance; click Settings which are
rather a drain on CPU for little benefit