Upgrade to Windows XP Pro

[kameleon]

Microsoft have supplied a nifty install program for the upgrade version of xp so that you can install from scratch without having the rigmarole of installing 95/98/me first. this is the best way to go as it lets you format your drive ntfs and you also dont have any of the niggly little problems the other OS's had

get it here

you will need to have 6 clean floppies to hand for this

 

[Miles_Binck]

Originally posted by kameleon
Microsoft have supplied a nifty install program for the upgrade version of xp so that you can install from scratch without having the rigmarole of installing 95/98/me first. this is the best way to go as it lets you format your drive ntfs and you also dont have any of the niggly little problems the other OS's had

get it here

you will need to have 6 clean floppies to hand for this

they are simply the Windows XP boot floppies which would be used if you cannot boot from your CD-Rom drive for whatever reason.


@xane, the transfer files and settings wizard can only be used if a 'new' PC (getting XP installed) and an 'old' (with another O/S on it) are connected via network or direct cable connection from your original post it looks like that isnt the case.

The best thing you can do is backup all important stuff (my docs / program settings / E-Mail / favourites etc) onto a CD and then format and install XP.
If you continue with the upgrade route your registry will be continue to be bloated with loads of useless stuff which will eventually take its toll on the PC (startup and shutdown issues, random GPFs, program problems and hardware driver problems)

as TdC once said

never "upgrade" when you can format and fully install

 

[xane]

Financial pressure put me on the "fresh install" path, the OEM XP Pro cost me around £120 as opposed to an "Upgrade" of around £150, with the new disk available it was obviously a better choice.

Gone okay so far, I am a bit pissed off with having to re-install everything but as I had spent the last few weeks honing my old machine down to the bear minimum it is all going rather smoothly. I stall had all the original downloads but half of them are useless as they are either out of date or for non-XP only.

Said a sad goodbye to 10+ years of software

I was pleasantly surprize how easy I transerred by e-mail, I just copied all the mail database files into the new directory and it worked straight off, same with the Palm backup.

Only major problem has been the re-install of Norton AV, I have the original 2000 version that will not work on XP, although I can upgrade it online to a compatible version it is getting it on the machine in the first place, had to dump it with around 6 months left on the subscription - bah !

Partition Magic 6.0 was also incompatible, but XP Pro seems to have a neat "Disk Manager" that looks like the diagnostics side of it (but doesn't have the repartitioning stuff).

I'm also glad I waited for SP1 so I could get rid of Media Player immediately

Many thanks to everyone for their valued advice

 

[danger]

You can clean install from the upgrade disk incidentally I have both an OEM copy and an upgrade.... basically the upgrade is identical except it asks you to insert your compatible upgrade product disk in at some point...