OS upgrade

Charles French · Post by **Charles French** » 4 Dec 2003 11:18 am

I think all my windows problem are due to this crappy ME OS I have. I've been thinking of upgrading to XP professional. Anyone use this? If I upgrade will I lose anything from my current OS? I don't want to lose my bookmarks or tons of other baggage I have. Would this affect my files and folders? This would be unbearable for I have about 40gigs of music on my HD.

tks, cf

Russ Wever · Post by **Russ Wever** » 5 Dec 2003 3:46 am

Old ancient proverb,
Confusious says:
"Back Up Your Hard Drive"

Steinar Gregertsen · Post by **Steinar Gregertsen** » 5 Dec 2003 5:13 am

I would have invested in an extra HD (they're real cheap these days) and copied everything over to that, just to make sure. Or you could get Norton Ghost or something similar and save the HD image to CD's (but that image would also include your old OS).

Having a spare HD for safety copies is a must if you have stuff on your computer that's very important to you. I had the main HD on my studio computer break down and it had been a distaster for me if I hadn't had safety copies on two other HD's as well.

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 5 Dec 2003 11:10 am

XP Professional -- has to be "Professional" -- includes a system backup executive with both wizard and expert modes to help you backup your complete system, including the registry, or "system state" as they refer to it.

External USB-2 hard drives are getting cheaper every day. That's the best solution I know of for backup because it's external and you can store your backup away from your computer, thus avoiding a catastrophe such as losing 1 or more hard drives to a lightning strike. You can get an external 80 GB HD for less than $150.

I don't know for certain the answer to your question on what data gets overwritten with an upgrade or new install of XP. Get the external drive first and just copy the stuff you really want to that drive.

Be sure and run the complete system backup and create an automatic recovery diskette once you get XP Pro installed.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ron Page on 05 December 2003 at 11:12 AM.]</p></FONT>

Lou[NE] · Post by **Lou[NE]** » 5 Dec 2003 11:23 pm

Hi Charles,
The previous posters have given you good advice - here's my 2 cents...

XP Pro is a good OS, but I would spend the money for the full version and start from scratch rather than do an upgrade. ME is indeed a POS - why build on it? (Easy for me to say - it's not my money.)

Good luck.

Lou

Mark Ardito · Post by **Mark Ardito** » 6 Dec 2003 6:07 am

Lou[ne],

You don't need the full version to do a full/clean install. It is an option when you go to upgrade. They ask you if you would like to upgrade your OS or do a clean install.

Mark

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Sho~Bud Pro I, Fender D-8 (C6&E13) http://www.darkmagneto.com

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 6 Dec 2003 11:46 am

I say, just get a copy of XP Home and another hard drive. You can have 2 hard drives in your computer. Set the new one as the master and install XP Home. Set the old one as slave and you'll still have access to everything on it. Won't have to delete anything from it.

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