Upgrading Operating System

[The Cowboy]

I am currently using Windows ME and to be honest thoroughly p****d off with it. It has got to the stage where Windows Media Player 9 wont run and I cant upgrade to 10.

When upgrading is it just a simple matter of getting the discs for another windows platform, and installing over ME?  In the past I have always had someone do my installations for me but now I would like to try it myself.

Cheers

Cowboy

[Mrs_Pegasus]

At the weekend I updated a friends machine from ME to 2000.  It would have been XP but to be honest for what she uses the machine for and the fact it isnt a very fast machine it will suffice.  It was a very simple job, very straight forward, follow the on-line instructions and away you go!!!

[The Cowboy]

Thank you Mrs Pegasus. Much appreciated.

[Mobius1]

It's worth remembering though that XP uses a different file storage system (NTFS compared to ME's FAT32) which means that it will have to reformat all or part of the hard drive that is going to be used by the new operating system. This means that you'll have to back up all your important data beforehand else you'll lose it.

[tomd]

XP will run on FAT32, it's just NTFS is recommended.

[smorodina]

XP can be installed on either NTFS or Fat32. Mine was on Fat32 until recently with no problems.

[fo3nix]

To add: it's worth backing up important data regardless of needing to reformat or not.

In fact, I would go as far as to suggest a total re-format anyway. It just feels cleaner to me. If you computer can handle it (i.e. roughly 2Ghz processor, 512mb ram), go for XP. If it's a bit older, and it only has a 1Ghz processor or similar, go for windows 2000 professional. Both pretty much as stable as eachother.

And then stop using media player and start using iTunes!

[smorodina]

Oops! Cross posting! But I just checked my other XP computer and it's running on FAT32 as well.

[fo3nix]

Technical note: one of main differences (that a user will notice, anyway), between FAT32 and NTFS is that only NTFS allows a single file on your system to be larger than 4GB in size.

If you plan to copy any home-made DVDs or things of that nature onto your computer (DVDs, full ones, are more than 4GB), you'll need NTFS. so go with that unless you really don't want to.

[smorodina]

...or Jet Audio! BTW, I should say that the computer I just mentioned is running XP using a 600MHz Pentium III and 256Mb. It's been thus for at least a year now with absolutely no problem at all. I was also running it on the other machine with exactly the same config until an upgrade a couple of weeks ago. That too was for the last year or so. I tried 2000 and had no end of trouble before XP. The only thing you do need is plenty of disk space for XP.

[The Cowboy]

Thank you all for the advice

[GLpinxit]

I upgraded my Me installation to XP a fortnight ago (1GHz/256Mb). It is worth noting that not everthing works as it used to now. None of this is crucial but it is all a bit tedious.

Main thing was I had to find updated drivers for my broadband modem (the Wanadoo one), the graphics tablet (havent got round to that yet) and my Webcam (I use the EyeToy from PS2 so had to scour the web for that again but it is a fab quality cam if anyone is interested).

Rather more irksome was the CD recorder that came with the drive (B's Recorder Gold) no longer behaves and just disconnects both CD drives. I've now uninstalled the software.

And reinstalling the interface for my mobile phone (Motorola V3) seems to pick up the old settings even after an uninstall and just reinstalls the non functioning Me version. (Haven't solved this yet.)

Everything else is fine and XP is also much more stable than Me ever was.