Windows 98 to XP upgrade - No hard drive space left!

[Ron Bullard]

I have a Gateway Pentium III, 500 Mhz, that came with
Windows 98. I have a 7.5 gig hard drive that was about
half full. After the XP upgrade "C: Properties" says that
I only have 700 meg or so of free space left. Is this
normal? I'm told that XP uses a lot of hard drive, but 3
gig?

I have heard and read about formatting the drive and
installing the XP upgrade as a "new" install using the
Windows 98 Disk when asked, but my level of comfort with
a procedure of that magnitude is not very high. I have
gone to Gateway and done a Bios flash in case it was a
problem with XP being able to correctly read the disk. No
help.

Any suggestions, or some direction as to where I can go to
learn more about the "new install" procedure and what is
involved with the re-formatting the disk, etc.?

 

[CWatters]

I've seen web sites that say you need at least an extra 2G minimum.

 

[LADYAUSSIEFAN]

I have heard and read about formatting the drive and

installing the XP upgrade as a "new" install using the
Windows 98 Disk when asked, but my level of comfort with
a procedure of that magnitude is not very high. >>>

You are to install xp as a upgrade only, a new install will only give you a
"dual boot". I had the same problem, you must reinstall windows me and install
it completely. Than you install windowsxp, there should be a "partition" part
where it asks whether you want to keep or delete a partition. Highlight the
partition you want to delete(there should be two paritions listed one of which
is hogging up all the space) and when you finish the windows xp install you
will have your hard drive space normal. Windows xp takes up close to 2 gigs I
think.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

You are to install xp as a upgrade only, a new install will only give
you a "dual boot". I had the same problem, you must reinstall windows
me and install it completely. Than you install windowsxp,

No, this isn't correct. No such two-step approach is necessary.
You *can* do a clean installation with the upgrade CD--Windows Me
or 98 doesn't have to be installed first, and you don't have to
end up with a dual-boot installation.

If you ended up with a dual-boot, you did it wrong.