Upgrading to XP

I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade or new installation. I'm not really concerned about anything on older system except for my music files. If I choose new installation, will this wipe out my music files? If so, should I network computers BEFORE I install XP and transfer music files that way? I was told it is easier to construct my wirelss network AFTER installing XP on older computer. It is currently running WIN98. Thanks

 

IMO, it's a bad idea to do an upgrade of an older O/S, a clean install will almost always result in a more satisfactory result.

 

This is how to do a clean install.
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

 

HI, If you do a clean install by formatting your drive you will loose everything.

You can do a clean install to a different partition on your drive and save your files. If you put in the CD in win 98 it will ask what you want it is to do and whether you want it to install to a different partition and then set up the partition for you.

You would then end up with a dual boot Win98 or Win XP.

I have not done this but it should then be possible to delete the win 98 files and then change the menu in XP to a single boot. I am not sure whether it will work or not.

You could just upgrade win98 and keep all your programs registered plus your files. Providing your Win98 is running well there should be no troubles. Peace Mal

 

upgrades cause future problems in my opinion.

if you dont need the data, you are definately better off wiping your system and starting clean as suggested by johnwill and dr. dave.

mal suggestes a new partition creating a dual boot system.

couple of problems with that.

1) do you have a copy of (and know how to use) a program such as partition magic? if not you will have to purchase one in order to do a non-destructive repartition of the drive.

2) do you really want a dual boot system?....if not then why waste the disk space on an os you will never use (win 98)


or if as mal suggested, you just delete the win98 files afterwards, you have a second partion now when you may or may not have wanted to split your drive.


I say again.


backup the data you need and do a clean install. easier in the longrun.

 

I will and have never upgraded an O/S. A clean install is the only way to go for me.
You can netowrk the puters and save you files or use something like Partition Magic, partition your hard drive and move your file to the partition you are not going to reformat.

 

HI, I am sorry but I was when doing a clean install the Set up program will partition the hard drive. There is no need to buy a separate program as MS has already taken care of it. The set up program asks whether you want to create a partition for it.

I also thought that this person had a lot of music files that they wished to save.

Another solution would be to get a new and extra drive and set up XP on that and keep the old drive as a data file.

The intention is eventually to have a network then it would be possible to transfer the files to a different computer, format the drive, load XP and then retransfer the files.

I agree that backing up and clean installing is the best way but is that possible with a big pile of music files other than to another drive. Peace mal

 

You got it Mal

 

Thank You all for commenting on my situation. I decided to burn music files to cd and just do a "clean" install of XP. Everythign was going good until I was asked to restart computer. All I can get is a black screen with blinking cursor in top right corner. It seems that my boot process is whacked but I'm not sure. It could be that I have older parts that may not be compatible. Here are specs of "old" system:

350Mhz AMD-K6 3D version 2
192MB RAM
30 Gig HD
Rage LT Pro AGP 2X

Also, how can I get into my BIOS?

Once again thank you all!!

 

Top LEFT corner...sorry!

 

You should have run the Windows Xp ready program from the XP CD or download it from Microsoft

 

I used XP disk to run program and when it asked to restart I did. It then started the whole installation process over and I aborted during the first step because I had already partitioned drive and had gone through the installation process. When it asked to restart, I took the disk out and then it went to boot up and flashed Compaq name and then black screen with blinking cursor in the left corner.

 

when it reboots that first time, you need to make sure to tell it to restart from the hard drive NOT the cdrom.

 

How or better where can I tell it to boot from HD? I can't remember how to get into BIOS if this is where I have to look. It never asked me during the installation process. The only thing I remember seeing was to take out the floppy if I had one in.

 

Older machines sometimes get confused about what to boot from, so when the installation is rebooting, I remove the CD until it gets past the boot state. Works like a champ that way.

This is probably not your problem, since if it did boot the CD, you wouldn't get a blank screen.