Windows ME upgrade to XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Should I start with a clean slate (format), or can I keep what is there
Most of what is there is games that can be re-installed (if necessary)!
 
Definitely a clean slate. This is always the best approach assuming you can
reinstall whatever software you'll need.
 
Greetings --

Some people will recommend that you perform a clean installation,
rather than upgrade over an earlier OS. For the most part, I feel
that these people, while well-meaning, are living in the past, and are
basing their recommendation on their experiences with older operating
systems. You'd probably save a lot of time by upgrading your PC to
WinXP, rather than performing a clean installation, if you've no
hardware or software incompatibilities. Microsoft has greatly
improved (over earlier versions of Windows) WinXP's ability to
smoothly upgrade an earlier OS.

WinXP is designed to install and upgrade the existing operating
system while simultaneously preserving your applications and data, and
translating as many personalized settings as possible. The process is
designed to be, and normally is, quite painless. That said, things
can go wrong, in a small number of cases. If your data is at all
important to you, back it up before proceeding.

Have you made sure that your PC's hardware components are capable
of supporting WinXP? This information will be found at the PC's
manufacturer's web site, and on Microsoft's Windows Catalog:
(http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx) Additionally, run
Microsoft WinXP Upgrade Advisor to see if you have any incompatible
hardware components or applications.

You should, before proceeding, take a few minutes to ensure that
there are WinXP device drivers available for all of the machine's
components. There may not be, if the PC was specifically designed for
Win98/Me. Also bear in mind that PCs designed for, sold and run fine
with Win9x/Me very often do not meet WinXP's much more stringent
hardware quality requirements. This is particularly true of many
models in Compaq's consumer-class Presario product line or HP's
consumer-class Pavilion product line. WinXP, like WinNT and Win2K
before it, is quite sensitive to borderline defective or substandard
hardware (particularly motherboards, RAM and hard drives) that will
still support Win9x.

HOW TO Prepare to Upgrade Win98 or WinMe
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q316639

Upgrading to Windows XP
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpupgrad.htm


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:




You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH
 
Bruce, if you take the ability to preseve installed software and settings
out of the mix (which is what I had indicated), then it IS better to do a
clean install, period. There is NO argument that can be made to prove that
upgrading is the better route.

With a clean install:

You get to reformat the hard drive (which, in and of itself, makes this
option the better route since you can only do this with a clean install).
When you upgrade, especially if the first OS was there for a while, you may
have a hard drive that is fragmented in ways that a standard defrag can't
fix.

You only wind up with system files from the current OS on the machine. And,
so you never have to worry about old OS .dll's and such hanging around.
There are ALWAYS remnants of the old OS left over when you upgrade.

You get a registry that is 100% based on the new system, with no entries
left over from the last system. There are always remnants of the old system
left in the registry and although upgrading to XP may be better than in the
past, it still isn't perfect. If you have installed/uninstalled lots of
software with the current OS, a clean install is just the ticket to a nice,
new, clean registry.

You just don't get this from an upgrade, hence the term "clean" install.
I've read comments you've made in other threads about this topic and, I'm
sorry, but they just don't make the case that an upgrade comes even close to
being better than a clean install when retaining the old applications is not
an issue.
 
Back
Top