Upgrading to Windows 95 to XP

[Susan]

Can Windows 95 be upgraded to Windows XP Pro? EULA for
Upgrade Advisor does not specify Windows 95. Guess it must
be 98 or above?

 

[Rudi D]

Hi Susan.

Windows XP cannot be upgraded from Windows 95. you will need to get windows
98 from somewhere or I would recommend you purchase a full version of
windows XP.

Rudi

 

[Tom Porterfield]

Can Windows 95 be upgraded to Windows XP Pro? EULA for
Upgrade Advisor does not specify Windows 95. Guess it must
be 98 or above?

The EULA does say XP Pro, however those have tried have reported
successful upgrades from 95. However I would recommend you perform a
clean install instead. I would also recommend you check the hardware
requirements. I have not seen any PC's that were built with Windows 95 in
mind that could perform well if at all with Windows XP installed.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP MCE
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Susan,

You cannot upgrade from Win95 to WinXP, it is not a supported path, though a
Win95 installation or CD can be used as a qualifier for a clean installation
using an upgrade CD.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Stephan]

Hi
If you're planning on upgrading a box with win95 on it to win xp
I would advise reconsideration

To run in a decent fashion, XP need a lot of oooomph,
lets say at least 256M of ram, a 40G hard drive, and
(taking a guess) a 1GHz P4, or 1.6GHz Celeron

which is more than win95 needed

I saw XP pro on a PIII / 866. it wasn't too bad.
if it were my machine, I would have disabled a
lot of the graphical fade in/ fade out etc to
give the processor more breathing room

Have fun
Stephan


Can Windows 95 be upgraded to Windows XP Pro?

 

[Susan]

RAM is only 128 MB but that could probably be increased
with card for $70. It has Pentium II. I and not savvy
enough to know how that would translate into performance
but from your remarks, it must be a definite negative.

 

[Jim Macklin]

It will cost you about $100 to buy an XP upgrade CD, $70 for
a memory card, your hard drive will be too small (you need
at least 2 GB just for the XP install, plus you do want some
data and applications.
Most of your hardware will not be XP compatible or it will
need software/firmware upgrade.
You can buy a brand new Dell P4 bare bones system for about
$400...


message | RAM is only 128 MB but that could probably be increased
| with card for $70. It has Pentium II. I and not savvy
| enough to know how that would translate into performance
| but from your remarks, it must be a definite negative.
|
| >-----Original Message-----
| >Hi
| >If you're planning on upgrading a box with win95 on it to
| win xp
| >I would advise reconsideration
| >
| >To run in a decent fashion, XP need a lot of oooomph,
| >lets say at least 256M of ram, a 40G hard drive, and
| >(taking a guess) a 1GHz P4, or 1.6GHz Celeron
| >
| >which is more than win95 needed
| >
| >I saw XP pro on a PIII / 866. it wasn't too bad.
| >if it were my machine, I would have disabled a
| > lot of the graphical fade in/ fade out etc to
| >give the processor more breathing room
| >
| >Have fun
| >Stephan
| >
| message
| >| >
| >Can Windows 95 be upgraded to Windows XP Pro?
| >
| >
| >.
| >

 

[Myron J. Mandell]

Many people set the bar way too high.

I have a laptop with P2-266, 128 MB of RAM, 6 GB drive running XP Home.
This machine originally came with Win95.
Does it run well? Not really. But, better than it ever ran under Win95.
I wouldn't want it as my main computer, but for auxiliary and occasional
travel use, it's OK.

I also have a P2-350 with 192 MB of RAM, 20 and 32 GB drives running XP
Home.
Takes a few minutes to completely boot and initialize, but other than that
works pretty well.

Myron

 

[Test Man]

Funny that, I had a P266 machine with 128MB RAM, 6GB SCSI + 3GB hard drives
running XP Pro. Was very very slow, but I could cope with it cos I knew
what I was doing. I wouldn't recommend it to ordinary users though.

 

[Susan]

Please explain the definition of "qualifier". How do you
do a clean installation using upgrade CD? If you use
upgrade CD, aren't you upgrading?

Thanks in advance.
Susan

 

[Malke]

Please explain the definition of "qualifier". How do you
do a clean installation using upgrade CD? If you use
upgrade CD, aren't you upgrading?

Thanks in advance.
Susan

An upgrade version of XP is a full version and you can install it on a
clean, formatted disk. Shortly after the installation starts, you'll
get a message saying something like "Setup can't find a previous
version of Windows on this machine; insert your previous operating
system cd". You'll then open the cd-rom drive, take out the XP disk and
put in the Windows 9x operating system disk. Setup verifies that this
qualifies you to use the upgrade version instead of the full, more
expensive version and then will prompt you to insert the Windows XP cd
again. However, what people are telling you is that you can't use your
Windows 95 disk as qualifying media because it is not a supported
upgrade. It isn't supported because, as people have said, it is
unlikely that a computer designed to run Windows 95 - with or without
more RAM - is unlikely to run well with Windows XP.

HTH,

Malke

 

[Steve C. Ray]

Malke, you CAN use the 95 CD as a qualifying disk for a clean install with a
XP Upgrade. But you can't upgrade a 95 existing installation to XP.

 

[Malke]

Malke, you CAN use the 95 CD as a qualifying disk for a clean install
with a XP Upgrade. But you can't upgrade a 95 existing installation to
XP.

Thanks for correcting me, Steve. I didn't realize that since I've never
tried to upgrade a Win95 box to XP. I appreciate the information.

Cheers,

Malke

 

[Steve C. Ray]

You are welcome, Malke. Your help here is always very good and clear. I
figured that this was something that you hadn't come across before. It is a
little confusing.

 

[Susan]

What happens in this case if you should happen to need to
reinstall Windows XP? Do you have to reload the qualifying
Windows and then use the Windows XP CD to reinstall? I
think I know why people like full versions!

Thank you everyone for your information.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

To run in a decent fashion, XP need a lot of oooomph,
lets say at least 256M of ram, a 40G hard drive, and
(taking a guess) a 1GHz P4, or 1.6GHz Celeron

I agree with the 256MB of RAM, but not with the other criteria.

How large a HD you need depends on what you use your computer
for. I've seen lots of people run XP quite successfully with a
10GB HD.

And as far as a processor, a 1GHz P4 is far from necessary. My
wife runs XP on a 400MHz P2. It's no speed demon, but she finds
it adequate for her uses.

 

[CS]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 10:32:42 -0800, "Susan"

No, you don't need to reload the qualifying Windows. The only
requirement is that you have the qualifying CD on hand to show the
installer when it asks for it. If you like to spend the extra $100
or so on the full version, be my guest. Bill Gates needs your money
so he can build an even bigger house the next time.

 

[Steve C. Ray]

Susan, the qualifying version does not have to be loaded at any time. You
just need to have it on hand so XP can see that you have a qualifying
version.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Yep, it's a little bug discovered late in the beta that was never fixed
(perhaps intentionally?). You can use it as a qualifier, you just can't
upgrade the platform.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

The EULA does say XP Pro, however those have tried have reported
successful upgrades from 95.

You cannot upgrade *over* Win95 at all; it is not accepted by setup as a
sound base. But you can use a Win95 CD as evidence of entitlement to do
a clean install with the Upgrade CD. The presumption I think was that
there are very few Win95 machines that would be capable of running XP,
so that the extensions of setup to handle upgrading over it were not
justified (especially as Win95 might be on a FAT 16 partition)