Ready to upgrade to XP Pro, anything I should watch out for?

[rozemab]

Hello,

My copy of 98SE is showing it's age. I plan to upgrade to XP pro within the next two weeks.

Current h/w is a 2.4gh P4, 512mb, Intel motherboard, and nvidia graphics card. Currently have a CD-RW and DVD-ROM installed. Two hds, 80 and 120 gigs each (Maxtors). All h/w is less than 6 monthes old.

For those who gone through an upgrade or has been running XP pro for awhile, can you share any experiences with me on installing and fine tuning the system? I understand some turn off some XP processes - .net and messenger...? Why is that?

thanks,

[Solo]

Hi there

Going over to WinXP is a brilliant idea in the first place. It is much richer in multi-media applications and it is by far the most stable Windows yet.
Word of advice. Do not buy the updrage version !!!! Rather get the full version and do a fresh installation. That way you will not have any conflicts. Your machine is fine for XP and you'll have no problems with speed. Also XP recognises a lot of hardware so you'll find you don't need to load as many drivers. Try make sure it has SP1 intergrated though.
As for disabling services. There are plenty backround services which do not need to be running for the home user. Going into services and which ones are safe to disable would take forever. But if you search Google under XP services + disabling there are plenty guides and tweaks.
I will however give you some examples of the ones I always do.
1 - If you are not using system hibernation turn it off. It is equal to the amount of RAM in your system therefore extra 500mb HHD space.
2 - Moving your pagefile to your second drive will increase performance.
3 - XP consumes a lot of resources because there is a lot of eye candy so if your not into that you can revert back to the old windows GUI which will speed it up considerably as well.
Anyway I hope you enjoy. I know you will ....

[SeeMoreDigital]

As long as you have an original version of Win98 or WinMe on CD you will not have any problems performing a clean install of WinXP using a WinXP upgrade CD!

I regularly format my 'Media PC' and reinstall using WinXP Home upgrade.

During the install proceedure. WinXP 'upgrade' looks for a previous version of an compatible Windows operating system. And when it can't find one (on your PC) it asks you to provide proof that you have one, in the form of a CD instead.

So you just pop in a CD of Win98, 98se or ME. And once it's verified you're away!

Saves quite a bit of money. And you get a clean install!

[rozemab]

@Solo- thanks for the reply! I found an interesting site www.blackviper.com that documents thoroughly what processes can be safely shutdown.

@seemoredigital - your advice is great! Yes, I still have my original full-install 98SE disk. I would prefer to have a completely new install to rid any remaining 98SE files.

I'm not too keen on the automated XP interface. Do either one of you use the 'classical' interface?


thanks,

[wmansir]

I use the classical interface, which basicly makes it like Win2K, but with better compatability.

You can select the windows classic look in the Display control panel. Also if you go to the System control panel, under the advanced tab, click on the performance settings button to adjust all the fancy visual effects that use CPU cycles.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I'm not too keen on the automated XP interface. Do either one of you use the 'classical' interface? Yes, I've installed the 'classic' start interface on all our work PC and my home PC's.

You get to this by right clicking on the bottom taskbar and going into properties.

Solo, gave a good tip about the pagefile. And hibernation, in my opinion is only useful for laptops.

Because, the XP OS is massive there are all kinds of tweaks you can use to improve performance. But in reality the less WinXP rubbish you install the better. So after install if you go to 'Add/Remove Programs' and remove things 'accessories and utilities', 'MSN Explorer', 'Windows Messenger' and even 'Outlook Express' (if you don't use it) this will help speed up things too!

But one thing I would recommend you do, do. And that is, form at least three partitions, two of them being boot partitions (6Gb min each will be OK) and load WinXP on each boot. And always download and save the 'critical updates'.

And don't be afraid to format and reinstall you're OS and applications when your PC starts to do wierd things!

[Solo]

as you have an original version of Win98 or WinMe on

OK - sorry I did read about that once before. I've never done it that way myself so I never knew. Now I do to. Thanks.

[rozemab]

Yesterday I when through the transition from 98SE to Xp Professional.

I elected to wipe clean my c:\ drive and install Xp fresh. No problems with the install. Every booted up fine and except from a few driver issues (they were not installed - strange!) everything went well.

I used the advice from www.blackviper.com to disable many processes that were automatic or manual. Machine rebooted fine afterwards.

I elected to upgrade to 1 gig of memory. What I found interesting was when I did a system->info (one of the Xp tools), it only showed about 400meg of free physical memory! What happen to the other 600meg?!!

I'm currently using the new Windows interface. Could this be hogging up all the free RAM?

[grant_h]

One thing I find very helpfull is norton system works if you don't have a copy of this program I suggest on getting it. Norton ghost is a great utility (included ins system works) Once you do a fresh install of windows and add a few of your favorite programs. Run norton ghost which will make an exact copy of your HD, so when you system starts acting up, you just pop in the disc(s) that ghost created for you and in a few min your system is right back to were it started from. Saves me lots of time not having to reinstall all my software. Hope this makes sense.