98 vs ME vs 2k, help..please?

[nabeels786]

hi,
should i upgrade to windows ME? ive heard lots of good thing about it, and ive heard lots of bad things. imrunning 98se now. my main question is...after i upgrade to ME and idont like it, can i "downgrade" to 98se (and can i do the same with 2000?)

and how about windows 2000?

i wanna upgrade my OS, but i dont wanna loose what ive got now.

thanks alot,
nabeel

 

[SpaceC0wb0y]

Why don't you partition your hard drive and put all of the files that you want to keep on a seperate partition than the OS. Then you can install and uninstall all the OS's that you want without losing your files. This is what I do so then I can just reformat my Os partition then reinstall my OS from a very stable image using Ghost.

 

[nabeels786]

but if you partition don't you loose all your data?

thx,
n

 

[PBiles]

SpaceCowBoy is right. If you need a fast way to partition use Partition Magic. With this tool you can change create delete and resize partitions at will from within windows. After getting everything the way you want it apply it and the system reboots and makes all the changes in a dos mode. Put your os on a small partition, like 3gig max, then you can either split the harddrive a couple of more times and have three partitions, or not and just have two. Make sure you know which files are os related and which are not. Then after you have that streightend out you can drag and drop/copy and paste non os related files from one partition to the other etc etc.

 

[nabeels786]

oh ok. thanks. also is it true zip drives dont work in 2k?

 

[PBiles]

As far as I know Zip drives work fine. I'm not using 2K right now and don't have a zip drive but my brother is and does with no problems. Zip drives to me are pointless if you have a CD/RW which I do, and you probably do.

 

[nabeels786]

oh ok. yeah i have a cd-burner too, but i use zip for small backups

thanks for the help

 

[FiberOptik]

I personally cannot get my USB zip 250 up and running in win2k. As of yet I haven't been able to get any help from people in the forums either. As for suggesting an OS, go with win2k, especially if you're not a big gamer. If you own a PC mainly because of your love for games, stick with 98se.

 

[Fencer128]

Assuming you have a mobo with a VIA chipset...

About the win2k zip drives question. I have an internal ATAPI 100MB zip drive. It will only work under win2k with a patch from iomega (which is in essence a hacked very old via 4in1 driver). Because installing this much "older" patch affects other hardware I choose not to use the zip. I don't know if the same problems exist with external/SCSI/250MB drives but it's definately an acknowledged problem with my version.