windows xp clean installation or upgrade?

[timu]

i am upgreading my system from pentium III 550 to a athlon xp 2100+ tomorrow. i will get a windows xp professional full version cd with it.
i used to use windows 98se before. now after upgrading i am thinking about windows xp professional. i am using my old 40gb hard drive with my new system.
now my question is
should i keep the windows 98 installed in my previous system and then upgrade it to windows xp? or
should i format my c drive and perform a clean installation?
thanks for your support.

 

[cdsonic]

Definately Clean Install

 

[bsobel]

While upgrading is supported, unless you absolutely have to, I always recommend a clean install. This way later, at a minimum, if you do run into a problem you've ruled out some weird interaction with left over 98 files and the new system.

Bill

 

[Shimmishim]

From my experience, I would do a clean install... reformat your hard drive

it's always nice to reformat your hard drive once in a while hehehe....

 

[skiznots]

Looks like we all agree. Clean install, especially from a 9x OS to XP.

~skiznots

 

[dogmir]

i will jump on the bandwagon and say clean....nothing beats a fresh install....

 

[batmanuel]

A clean install is much better. My laptop originally came with Windows Me, with the option to upgrade later to XP Home for $30 extra. I got the upgrade and it ran pretty well but it only gives you the option of FAT32 for the file system, but I decided I wanted to run with NTFS instead of FAT32. So I used CONVERT.EXE to change the file system. BIG mistake. What I didn't learn until later is that during the conversion the allocation sectors are changed to a size that makes you hard drive run REALLY slow. Luckily I recently got a NFR version of Windows XP Pro free for attending a Microsoft retail training event, so wiped the drive and reinstalled with that. XP runs SO much better, plus I have gotten rid of a lot of crap my laptop manufacturer added to the machine when I bought it. Full install is the only way to go.

 

[ConclamoLudus]

Clean install. I tried an upgrade form 2k to XP last night. Slowed everything down. Clean install was perfect.