Question for Microsoft Gurus - II

[doylehargraves]

I have a god-awful ME edition installed. Do I need to upgrade to XP, or are there other alternatives?

 

[MeaHorn]

If possible, save the data you need and wipe that ***** clean (re-format the drive.)

Pop in the XP Pro CD, reboot and follow the instructions for a clean install.

 

[MrPhlegm]

I've got ME also, and I have a second drive that has enough capacity to hold everything that is currently on the C drive.

If I install XP pro should I unplug the second drive or can I just leave it plugged in?

Also, dosen't XP use a different data format for the disk drive?

If so will it beable to read the data on the other drive after I install it?

 

[MeaHorn]

So, you'll want to do this:

1. Copy everything you care about and/or need off of the C drive to your second drive.
2. Leave the second drive plugged in.
3. Install XP and format drive C with NTFS (that's the different data format you mentioned).
4. After installation, you can copy the files from the second drive to your new XP installation, or leave them where they are. (it really depends on the data and/or application)

XP can read drives formatted in either FAT32 or NTFS. NTFS is faster than FAT32 and it provides other improvements.

Get rid of WinME and don't ever look back!

 

[TexasOwnzYou]

XP mainly uses NTFS, but it can read from FAT32.

Install XP on the empty drive, and make the other drive the slave. This way, you can accesss all the files from it.

 

[MrPhlegm]

If by "the slave" you mean that it is configured as the slave with dip switches or the pins then it is already the slave. If you mean something else then I don't know what you are talking about.

The main reason I want to do this is because I had the C drive partitioned into 3 partitions with LINUX on one of the partitions and LINUX somehow dinged it's partition and it won't let me put all of the partitions back together again without me reloading everything. So if I am going to have to wipe everything clean I might as well upgrade to XP Pro.

What am I going to need to do to be able to use the XP upgrade instead of having to buy it outright?

 

[hollisdude]

I would just reiterate this - do not just do an upgrade from ME to XP. Wipe the drive celan and install XP fresh. Otherwise, you will waste 3-4 hours and you will end up doing it the suggested way after all.

 

[Mal]

I believe you should be able to do a clean install with just the upgrade CD (opposed to the full version). It may ask you for you for your WinME media if that is the case.

As for the Linux issue you had, you can use the first disc of any recent version of Mandrake to resize or get rid of partitions. Basically, you follow through the installation until you reach the partitioning section. Once you've done the resizing and have written the settings to disc, just restart. It is about the only good thing to do with Mandrake.