Some advice on XP upgrade please.

[martensite]

I have a PIII 500 MHz with 256MB (PC100), GeForce 2 GTS, 2 HDDs (80GB Maxtor and 20GB WD), Pioneer DVD, SBLive etc

I am currently running Win98 SE, but I can get a free copy of XP Pro from the univ for my personal use.

(A) Will my system be able to handle Xp Pro smoothly if i turn off all the eye-candy and animations? Main heavy-duty use would be playing DoD/Q3 etc (not any of the newer games).

(B)Will I have to upgrade the memory to 512MB or more? (I was told by someone that XP Pro requires about 128Mb for its own use...)

(C) If I do upgrade, can I copy some of my existing files to the 20GB drive, and after I do a clean install of XP Pro on the 80GB, copy them back to the 80GB (or run them from the 20GB itself)? I was under the impression that XP Pro uses NTFS and Win98 uses FAT32. Will there be any problems in XP Pro recognising the new drive?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[dbwillis]

It should run OK on that hardware, but more mem is better...but 256 should be OK for everyday use...there are some services that you can disable and get some mem useage back from...

Yes, you can copy files to the 20gb drive, REMOVE the 20gb from the system, then install onto the 80GB and then reconnect the 20GB later and copy your files back onto the 80GB...I dont think many programs will work right off the 20GB due to a new OS being installed..

 

[martensite]

Thanks for the reply.

I plan to back up only my collection of MP3s, Jpegs and AVI files 🙂D) on that secondary drive, so programs will not be running from that drive as such.