Win98 to XP Pro?

I'd like to hear from anyone who would be willing to share their experiences in upgrading from win98 to XP Pro. I'd like to hear all the pros and cons before I make this decision. I have a Pentium II @350Mhz. I have 2 hard drives, so let me know if you'd recommend keeping one on 98 and one on XP. Thanks for the help,
Barry

 

The decision to keep 98 and dual-boot or upgrade 98 or format and load XP on a clean drive will strictly depend on what your needs are.

- If you need 98, your best decision might be to avoid XP at this point.

- If you decide to dual-boot, you should be aware that XP-pro will want around 4Gb of drive space for itself to run comfortably and you'll still need room for apps and data.

If you decide to replace 98 with XP, my suggestion is a clean start. Boot from XP CD, format the system drive, and install. That isn't specific to this upgrade either. I nearly always suggest a fresh start with the exception of some server upgrades from NT4 to 2K.

With a PII, you are going to see some serious performance issues. Lots of memory will help but we are talking 256Mb minimum and 512Mb would be better. And with the probably age of other components (based on your CPU age) you will probably have hardware that won't work any longer and will require replacement.

Rather than a bunch of hardware changes to allow XP to run on a minium system, you might want to consider keeping the 98 PC and getting another for XP. Might be about as cheap and would certainly perform better. And you could have a network (if you don't already) or a bigger network.

I use and really like XP-Pro but there is no doubt it is a serious resource hog.

For lots more discussions on this topic, search the XP section and use upgrade for the search. Of the 155 hits, around 20-25 deal mostly or completely with upgrades from earlier operating systems.

 

Thanks Newt

I have a 30GB & a 40GB hard drive with 384MBRAM. It sounds like I could handle XP with my system, but with what you are saying, I probably wouldn't see much of an improvement. Any other suggestions?

 

I'm using XP Pro on a P II 233 with 128 meg of ram. It has a 6 gig hard drive partitioned in half. It runs better then it ever did. Just the fact that is hasn't crashed is reason enough for me to be happy.

 

Well Barry - there you have it. I gave you theory and what "should" happen. Sled gave you experience.

So it may well be worth trying the upgrade after all. But you may well be looking at hardware upgrades so check it out completely before you decide.

Or Sled may not be as demanding as you are and what makes him happy may not suit you at all.

I did originally upgrade a PIII from 98 to NT4 to 2K-pro to XP and it ran. Slow with some things and the 4Mb video card wasn't a help but it did run and did not crash.

But I wound up getting a clean, new box for XP and it runs lots faster.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll hold off on making any changes for now. They'll probably have a whole new system in a few months anyway.