XP, to upgrade or start from scratch?

[George Del Monte]

If one were WANT to upgrade to XP from Win98SE, would it be best to do a
clean install (reformat hard drive, reinstall all applications) or just
stick the XP CD in the drive and let 'er rip? I just remember reading a lot
of horror stories about actual attempts at upgrades vs. a clean install (of
course, one requires a different box, one costing much more than the other)

 

[Steve Robertson]

George-

I prefer clean installs. One upgrade attempt I made a few years ago became
an unbootable mess when the installation program failed to complete.

If you have space on the disk I'd recommend making a second partition,
leaving the Win 98 intact. You can perfect the XP installation while still
having the use of the Win 98. A boot menu at startup allows you to select
between the two. When you're confident that the XP is as you like it then
you can delete the Win 98.

Steve

 

[Frank GoBell]

If one were WANT to upgrade to XP from Win98SE, would it be best to
do a clean install (reformat hard drive, reinstall all applications)
or just stick the XP CD in the drive and let 'er rip? I just remember
reading a lot of horror stories about actual attempts at upgrades vs.
a clean install (of course, one requires a different box, one costing
much more than the other)

It's always preferable to do a clean install. XP is built on the NT kernel;
98 is actually DOS-based. That alone can cause problems; add to it that you
will be "importing" old, outdated Registry settings, and possible
incompatibilites, you end up with a far more stable system by doing a clean
install.

 

[George Del Monte]

Frank, thanks for the advice. I can now see that a clean install is the
safest route to success although it may take a bit more work getting there.

George

 

[Steve Robertson]

Hi George,
for it or will I have to use PartitionMagic?<<

You will have to use something like Partition Magic or Partition Commander
to shrink the size of the current single primary partition leaving a major
chunk of free space. Then create a new extended partition to encompass the
free space. Then create one or more logical drives in the extended
partition. Depending on how much space there is on the drive, you may want
to leave some as free space in the extended partition since it is easy to
add free space to an existing logical drive as you need it.

XP may be installed to a logical drive -or- a primary partition just as
well. One thing to guard against is allowing XP to convert the Win 98
partition to NTFS as 98 will then be useless. It may offer to do this.

Yes, the XP setup program will recognize the Win 98 and ask you if you want
to do a clean install or upgrade. When you choose the clean install the boot
menu will be installed automatically.
accumulated
over time for applications such as Quicken if I reinstall it in the XP
partition, because Intuit will not let me update it. Do you have a solution
there?<<

Not really. If Intuit is no longer supporting the version you may be forced
to upgrade Quicken.
be
accomplished?<<

The Fat 32 can be converted to NTFS in XP, and you can vary its size as much
as you want, but you *MUST* not allow it to go away completely. XP will have
installed to D: (or E or whatever) and to cause an operating system
partition to *reletter* (change from D: to C: for instance) is to destroy
it. Drive lettering is a function of the OS loader and the IDE controller.
You have to 'think like an IDE controller' in order to predict what will
happen. You have no control over drive letters until the OS has successfully
booted and you have access to Disk Management. By then it would be too late
if you had caused a drive letter to change. So be sure to keep Win 98's
partition in place in some respect. Put your user files there, or install a
second copy of XP. I always have 2 OSs installed, usually on D: and E:. When
one gets squirrelly I always have the other to depend upon.

S

 

[George Del Monte]

OK, Steve, I've got a great deal more confidence now that you've shed the
light with answers on the few problems I could imagine. If you think there
are any other pitfalls, please let me know.

Thanks again,

George

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Steve - and George.

Good advice, Steve. Most people don't think about that final paragraph in
your latest post.

The Fat 32 can be converted to NTFS in XP, and you can vary its size as much
as you want, but you *MUST* not allow it to go away completely.

First, we need to clarify that you must use Partition Magic or something
similar to vary the size of a volume, including Drive C:, that first primary
partition. MS calls this the System Partition because that's where all the
"system files" for all installed OSes must reside. There are only a few
small system files; for Win9x/ME they are io.sys and msdos.sys, for Win2K/XP
they are ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini, plus bootsect.dos for a dual-boot
system. They all are hidden, system and read-only and they all must reside
in C:\, the Root of the system partition. All these files total less than 1
MB, so the system partition actually can be very small if no Windows version
is installed there.

The system partition must be FAT (16 or 32) so long as Win9x/ME is installed
anywhere on the computer. It MAY remain FAT even after the DOS-based
Windows versions are removed. Conversion to NTFS is optional.

Personally, I like to keep Drive C: quite small and have nothing much but
the system files there. For legacy reasons, my Drive C: is 715 MB, and it
remains FAT16 for maximum compatibility. In addition to the system files, I
also keep older DOS versions of Norton Utilities and a few other utility
files there. Also, there is some room to be used by those few programs that
insist on writing their "scratch" files their during installation. And
those stupid programs that expect My Pictures to ALWAYS be on C:.

All the rest of my volumes are logical drives, and now all are NTFS. Over
the past 5 years, I have dual-booted various successive combinations of
Win95, Win98, WinNT4, Win2K and WinXP; I now am dual-booting two copies of
WinXP - and recently added Win2K3 Server Standard Edition, just to see what
it looks like. By having my system partition separate on C:, I can reformat
D: or E: or X: without disturbing it. If I want to do serious surgery on my
main WinXP on D:, I just boot to my second WinXP on X: and fully defrag D:,
reformat it, or even delete the whole volume and recreate it. I could not
do that if I had installed WinXP on Drive C:.

(And I fibbed just a bit in that last paragraph. My second and third HDs
each have a minimal (8 MB) FAT primary partition at the front with a set of
the system files, so that those HDs can be used for booting into DOS or
WinXP if my first HD fails.)

Just some thoughts, George. Steve has the right idea here. At least, he
agrees with me. ;<)

RC

 

[Steve Robertson]

If you think there are any other pitfalls, please let me know.<<

Sure!

S

 

[George Del Monte]

RC, thanks for watching over this. It just gets better and better and my
apprehensions are declining as you guys wade in. Although I've made every
effort to keep my Win98SE up-to-date, clean, uncluttered and because of that
it is as trouble-free as 98SE can be, I feel an inexplicable urge to move up
to XP.

Thanks again,

George

 

[R. C. White]

Go with the urge, George. ;<)

I predict that you'll never wish you had stayed with Win98. After the first
week, that is. There is a learning curve, of course, but this one is pretty
mild.

The hardest thing will be getting rid of the DOS mindset. You don't need
FDISK and Format.exe any more; Disk Management will handle all that, except
for the initial partitioning and formatting, which will be done by WinXP
Setup. You will need all new drivers, of course, because WinXP deals with
hardware much differently from DOS, but you probably will find all the
drivers you need installed automatically by Setup. And that new GUI might
take some getting used to.

Within a week, though, you'll wonder why you waited so long. ;<)

RC