chris, this reminds me, i need to format, and well, i need to make backups of all my stuff, so if you know anyone willing to let me borrow a cd burner and stuff for a day, i would love it man. and if i was going xp, i would go clean install.

The morale of the story is: Use multiple partitions! I had to reinstall Win2K after it couldn't handle me changing my motherboard, and I lost next to nothing since I almost a dozen partitions (back up your registry if you're really serious about losing nothing). It's kind of weird though, Windows is the forgiving OS, yet it wouldn't boot while Linux had no problems after the mobo change...

2k/xp can't hande a mobo change.  it actually things you got a virus.  i had this issue swapping a HDD between two IBM laptops.  i looked up the stop error it gave me.  and lo and behold... it said something had changed my IDE controllers and blah blah blah.  so, end of story, pretty much any Windows version is NOT going to handle a mobo change.  9x can "handle" it, but it's not pretty.  
multiple partitions is one option, but what if the drive fails.  you're f---ed.  two seperate physical drives is another solution... but what if you're hit by lightning?  what if?  what if?  

i've read the white papers on the XP upgrade process, and i'll tell you it's just so amazingly simple it makes too much sense.  essentially it backs up the system to temp locations, installs itself clean, then migrates/translates all the registry entries and other stuff over to Xp.  the dev team at M$ was striving toward a 99% success rate... a fail being anything no matter how small that did not work on the other end.  i've done upgrades from Win98/SE/ME/2k and all work flawless.  i've always been an opponent of the upgrade from one OS to another, but Xp just works!

I upgraded because, like chris said, had way too much stuff to backup/reinstall afterwards so I upgraded to XP last month. Everything went pretty smooth except certain programs didnt' work. I couldnt' even uninstall them for some reason. So I uninstalled XP, and it reverted back to my old os. It said some dll was missing, but everything was working just fine. I uninstalled those programs not working from there, and then reinstalled XP once again.

Before uninstalling, it told me that any changes, ie programs installed/uninstalled would need to be redone.

Like what vetritrus said, XP makes a backup of your old system. If you really want to, you can get rid of the backup file by going to the uninstall of XP. It'll ask you if you want to get rid of XP or get rid of the backup. Of course, the backup takes up space your your HD.

also using the upgrade advisor before upgrading will also save you some headaches.  it's on hte menu that pops up when you insert the CD.  it'll tell you what will and will not work.  i had the benefit of using 2k before Xp and all the issues with apps i had with that streamlined what apps i still use vs. not use.  sorry to hear about your issues with your upgrade rice...  :(

i fund if you upgrade... from 98 to xp it dont get the transparences on the icons... ME to XP you get a cleaner transparncy, i personally feel format is the way to go. just back up all your sh!t and format.

clean is good.

yes clean is very good... =)

(Edited by BluntedbyNature at 11:27 pm on Oct. 29, 2001)

Clean is...well.......clean:biggrin:

Yeah, i'm gonna get xp pro. gotta fig some way to backup my stuff (30Gb :( ). my cd burner is an 8x4x32, no good, i got no cd's anywayz. so i'm gonna have to do it another way. any suggestions?

Well, I'm gonna get a new computer with XP installed and then I'm just gonna put the stuff I NEED on a few disks, take a few of my fav programs and reinstall them on the new computer, and then leave the rest of my crap on the old computer.  No mess, simple. :biggrin:

do you have a network trakker?  you could throw it onto another machine...

Or borrow someone else's HD, use it as a slave, and copy all your stuff onto it. I have Linux on my second HD, so it makes a great method of backing stuff up (that's how I got the few files I did have on C backed up after Win2K went insane).

(Edited by Null and Void at 11:58 pm on Oct. 29, 2001)

you could by another hdd like a 30+ gig and just move all your stuff there... and then you will have your old 30 plus a new one and have more room =) works out for 2 good reasons

yes, in fact i do.
iv'e tryed using the network a few times, but my dad's machines(the only other comps on the network) the hard drives won't hold sh!t. so i've  gotta hook up one of my drives to his comp, and another to mine, and all this and that, its gonna take 12 hours, and everything is gonna end up in a mess, and just don't go there :biggrin:

hah, if only it were that easy. yeah ive got 2 - one 30 gb and one 8gb (slow as he!!) and guess which one's got the o/s on it? the 30gb.  and lawn mowing season's over with, and cash dont come easy :(

You could always pimp out your sister... or don't you have a sister?

j/k man :)

what do you have more than 8Gigs of?  you could always... deltree the windows and program files folders on the 30 and pretend to be installing clean.  that way you keep all the other crap.  it's not the cleanest way to do it, but it would work.  just run the FAT/NTFS converter when it installs.

thats why i love having a server with over 160 gigs in it... plus all the computers on the network =) no computer in the house has smaller than a 20 gig... and there is 5 other computers in the house besides me... =)

now if we all had such a hookup...