WinXP upgrade to 2000?

Is windows XP an upgrade to Win2000?

I have both win98 and win2000 on my system and was wondering of I should upgrade win2000 to winXP) if that is the case).

If I can, how would this affect win98 (don't want to remove it because have legacy programs on there)? I have win98 on G: drive and win2000 on C:

thx for any info.

 

First off, yes XP Professional Edition is an upgrade to Win2K (Win2K a/k/a/ NT 5.0, WinXPPro a/k/a NT 5.1), but not XP Home Edition. If you wanted to use XP Home, you'd have to do a separate installation or remove Win2k and install it instead. Same thing applies to going from WinNT 4.0 to XP: you can only go to the pro version (I think - never actually tried it but I'd lay $ on it).

If you have both Win98 and Win2k installed already, I don't see any problem with upgrading Win2K to XP Pro, besides of course any regular bugs/problems that might occur in the MS upgrade process. it's almost always better to do a clean installation of an OS rather than an upgrade, but going from Win2K to XP Pro is probably the most seamless upgrade MS has ever created.

Since you have your OS's on different drives, you shouldn't have any trouble. Just make sure NOT to convert the G: Win98 drive file system from Fat/Fat32 to NTFS. If you do, Win98 won't load and there's no rollback for that.

Hope that helps!

 

I would leave the second drive as fat32. What I may do is just install XP clean since I don't have very much installed on win2000.

My next question then is what is the difference between XP home and XP pro and why would I want one vs. the other?

ALSO, If I install XP clean won't it wipe out any settings I have for win98? I know for a fact that the autoexec.bat for win98 (even though it is installed on G: drive) actually exists ands runs off of C: drive at boot time (since that physical drive has the boot partition). Also, win2000 allows me to boot to either itself or win98, I'm assuming win XP allows for the same? So my concern is for anything on the C: drive that is required for win98 to run (if I reformat it I would lose system files it needs to boot/run, the autoexec.bat being one for sure).

Adding another wrench to the plans, I have Linux installed on the same drive as win98, and boot to it thru Lilo.

Ech.. I hate new operating systems... not like you have to buy a new engine for your car every year <sigh>.

Thx,

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

 

Good resources from Newt - definitely check those out. basically the Pro version has all the networking stuff built into it for use on a LAN (joining domains, accessing/tweaking network permissions if you have those privledges on the LAN, etc.). if you're in doubt, go with XP Pro because it has all the features of Home plus the features listed above and many others.

 

In general, XP-home is XP-pro with features removed rather than XP-Pro being XP-home with features added.

Many folks don't need the features and are perfectly happy with XP-home. However, if you get the home version and aren't satisfied with it, you have to buy the pro version since there is no cheap upgrade path.

In my case, home was never an option so I have to admit I've never laid hands or eyes on it. Only seen folks posting on here to get things fixed and I have learned not to give instructions based on pro to them. They are IMO similar but different operating systems.