updating from win 98 to xp?

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coachrob

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I am currently running win 98 with no problems, but I just purchased a firewire pci card that I thought was compapible with Win 98 now it arrives and on the box it says win 98se and up. so i was thinking maybe upgrade to xp but after reading a lot of the posts on this board it appears there are a lot of problems with installing xp.

would i have to format my old drive before installing and loose all of the software, settings etc. a lot of the software was freeware and i don't even know where i got it after all these years also my outlook express contacts etc would not like to lose them.

i really don't know anything about xp. i feel comfortable with win 98 and have no problems with it but need the firewire for a new sony mindv camcorder.

also the machine is 1.3 meghertz ami cpu with 512m ram on board

any advise would be appreciated.
 
You can do an upgrade from 98 to XP but tests have shown that your system would be more stable if XP was installed clean.

I suggest that you back up all your needed data and install it clean.
 
yeah i would do a clean install too, but if you want to do just an upgrade you can put the winXP cd in and select "test compatability" to see how your current hardware and software will be affected with ugrading to winXP. it will tell you which programs will need to be re-installed, and which hardware will need to have newer drivers to work with winXP.

winXP supports many older hardware, i'm sure if you look on the microsoft site they would have a list of compatability and/or a program to test it out.

you said you have "1.3 meghertz ami cpu with 512m " which i think you meant 1.3Ghz AMD, i would go ahead and buy winXP. my AMD 1Ghz cpu and motherboard worked flawlessly with winXP. the risk you take is extremely low in my opinion given your hardware specs.
 
I did the upgrade from Win98 to XP.. not a problem at all. I lost maybe a crappy antivirus program, and some other crap I didn't use anyways. But if you're like me, and goin' in for the long haul, convert your system drive to NTFS. Any others don't matter that much, but the root drive, from my experience, needs to be NTFS.
 
Lostman said:
You can do an upgrade from 98 to XP but tests have shown that your system would be more stable if XP was installed clean.

I suggest that you back up all your needed data and install it clean.

My sugestion as well, was also going to add to make sure your system supports it. Requirements should be the same as windows 2000, 266Meg CPU or better with at least 128 meg RAM and 5 Gig HD.
 
back-up back-up back-up.
that's why i burn everything i download. that includes music, movies, installers... im always ready for the worst
 
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