OT: Operating System Upgrade

[TurinTurambar]

Given the gargantuan limitations of Windows ME, I'm going to ditch it and install a new OS.

Given the intent of Mr.Gates and his ilk to stop supporting Win2K as soon as possible, and the fact that Photoshop CS2 needs it, the "upgrade" will unfortunately be XP:Pro. I've been learning to deal with XP on another machine, and since SP2 it's been tolerable, so I'll manage.

Now the last time I did this was from 95 to ME. They both run on DOS so there was no problem just installing the new one over the old one. Now since XP has no DOS in it, will I be able to do the same thing? Just throw in the CD and spend an hour at it?

Any help/advice/warnings appreciated. (Other than "Oh my god, don't go to XP - it sucks!" I'll just ignore that.)

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[Ed Kolis]

You could go with Linux... who needs Photoshop when you have the GIMP?

[El_Phil]

The GIMP or a GIMP. That is an imporant distinction.

XP can boot and install from the CD, I did it no problem. The dual booting support was amazingly simple, but then I did have a new hard drive to put XP on. Unless your short of space or want to do clever rights access stuff I wouldn't put NTFS on, even then the space saving appears to be pretty small in the scheme of things. The disadvantage of NTFS is that almost nothing can read an NTFS drive without pissing around.

Finally you may want to run the file and transfer wizard before nuking ME. It does roughly what it says on the tin and is good at getting my documents, start menu, IE favourties etc. On the other hand as you'll need to re-install most software and may not use IE it could be a total waste of time.

Just my 1.4 trillion Turkish Lira.

[TurinTurambar]

I do use I.E. and would of course run the wizard. I hadn't thought about having to re-install everything. Gag. The registry values installed for ME would make a whole buncha crap not work anymore in XP. I sicken just thinking of it.

Ah well, can't stand in the way of "progress." I've got nothing better to do over the next coupla weeks than reinstall software that I find not working, right? Gag.

Would purchasing an upgrade CD (not usually advised, I know) lessen some of the impact and self-upgrade some things like Office 2000, etc.?

[Iron Giant]

I would:

1. Copy off all your important files to a CD or USB memory stick

2. Write down all your components from Device Manager and get the XP drivers downloaded a CD or Memory stick

3. Completely wipe the hard drive as part of the XP install and reinstall all applications.

Everything just runs better when its all minty fresh

[TurinTurambar]

Considering the size of this system, I would rather have GT shove his Red Hot Firepoker Cannon up my arse than wipe these two hard drives.

[Xrati]

Don't worry about reinstalling all your stuff. I upgraded to SP2 only to find I had to reset all my programs after SP2 installed itself and erased all my settings. Thanks Gates!!!

Just do what Iron Giant recommends (on CD or DVD if you can) and remember that "CHANGE IS GOOD" and the longer you procrastinate, the longer it will take you to get up and running.

[Renegade 13]

For me, Home hasn't been bad at all. But presumably if you're a more "advanced" user, Pro would be for you...I think?

[El_Phil]

The difference between Pro and Home?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/03/xp_hack/

about two bytes apparently.

I've been on Home and it ain't bad, a few things have run faster, a few slower. And I can now play with Google Earth and various other toys that only work on 2k or XP. Probably worth it overall.

[Ed Kolis]

One thing I found out is that Home won't let you set advanced permissions like Pro will, such as "only certain users can access certain directories"... you're basically stuck with kiddie Limited accounts and godlike Administrator accounts
Either that or I just forgot where to look for that setting...