Whats the best way to upgrade

Im going to do my first upgrade this week.
I intend to go from Win98 to Xp.

Should i wipe Win 98 off the computer in question and install XP or should i install XP over the top of Win 98?

Whats the best way to go. Remember im a novice at this sort of thing.

Cheers guys!

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Comments

PD75

What??? Nobody knows????? lol

gravyjoe

I have always heard that it is better to do a clean install. I tried upgrading Win98 to Win2000 once, which wasn't successful. I think it had something to do with my Win98 partition originally cloned by the original owner of the computer. Anyways, I did a clean install and it worked out fine, so I'm guessing that WinXP would work out the same way. That's just my 2 cents on it.

Ricka182

I always recco doing a clean install. I use a seperate boot disk to format the drive, and start anew.

dsa1971

I always do clean installs when I upgrade my OS. It makes life so much easier and you get to go back and install only the apps you really use getting rid of all the apps you never use but also never uninstall.

darkmagic

gravyjoe wrote:

I think it had something to do with my Win98 partition originally cloned by the original owner of the computer.

I am sorry but i could not understand what did you mean by that.

Also, i upgraded my computer from Win98 to WinXP & it worked fine, but yeah i also agree that its always better to do a clean install to have that clean feeling, also if you are doing an upgrade, & you click on yes to store the uninstall information, it takes up a lot of space unneccesarily on your hard-disk, which you seldom need.

mobri09

Unless you want your old existing files with the computer do a clean install. If it is for someone else, please backup their data and just do an upgrade for them. But like we all pretty much said here if its for yourself or someone that needs a stable OS do a CLEAN INSTALL> good luck

johnnynodough

Put upgrading out of your mind, a clean install is the only way to go from 98 to XP. Otherwise you will just be reloading windows later anyways :P

TheShadow

I agree if for no other reason than the desktops are not compatible. You will always end up with XP type things that never work right because of things done to the 98 desktop. You also end up with lots of invalid registry entries that never go away.

crabeater

Upgrading a 98? I know XP "runs better" than 98 & 2K, but that processor is going to get taxed, and some things (like voice recognition) require a faster PC.

But if you set on upgrade or clean, remember FAST & USMT so you can take your settings with you.

For $300, Dell will get you up to date with a new PC. If I had not already put together a PC on my own a few months before the promotion, I would have done that.

RZetlin

Clean install is always the best.

I have encountered some iffy issues when customers upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP. (Eg. Slow performance, some programs won't run properly)

RussS

Like many here have mentioned - a clean install is the best way of doing things. As an experiment a few weeks ago I reimaged a Compaq D320 with the manufaturers CD and then upgraded to XP. I also did a clean install on another one at the same time - the clean install out performed the upgrade when running benchmark tests by a wide margin.
On other thing to remember is that most machines that have W98 on them will be running 100Mhz SDRAM or slower and it is a pain (and very expensive) to find extra SDRAM these days. XP with SP2 will need 384 MB RAM as a minimum (preferably 512) if you want it to run with reasonable results.

darkmagic

RussS wrote:

XP with SP2 will need 384 MB RAM as a minimum (preferably 512) if you want it to run with reasonable results.

OMG i am running XP ( without SP2 ) & i have only 256MB of PC600 RDRAM, what i am i doing

RussS

darkmagic wrote:

OMG i am running XP ( without SP2 ) & i have only 256MB of PC600 RDRAM, what i am i doing

Struggling probably ... lol

darkmagic

RussS wrote:

darkmagic wrote:

OMG i am running XP ( without SP2 ) & i have only 256MB of PC600 RDRAM, what i am i doing

Struggling probably ... lol

Well, actually i would say i am doing pretty good, i am running 3 Bit torrent clients at the same time & running a POP-CAP game & have media player 10.0 running in the back ground. I am not complaining

johnnynodough

Ewwww, page files

I predict the amount of total ram (physical and virtual) consumption I will use on my PC's, and I go above that figure. My main box that I mostly use for everything, gaming, surfing, etc has 2 gigs and swapfile disabled.

I can attest to haveing XP SP1 on a rig with 256 MB of ram, my last work laptop had 256 MB ram, ran like crap. Get in the office, boot it up, then go get my coffee

darkmagic

johnnynodough wrote:

Get in the office, boot it up, then go get my coffee

I would go to get a glass of water

And it would do