Windows XP??

[Sera]

hi guys! its been a long time..
well, i'm upgrading my OS to winXP now (as everyone bash ME ) my question is are there any programs (patch) needed to be downloaded so that i could run all my games perfectly? I also noticed that before the installation some of my hardware are not supported, are there any upgrade that i could download for all of them? or should i download an upgrade particularly?

[DB7]

Well I appear to be the only ME supporter in the world but if you want to upgrade I say do this.
visit the sites of all the things you think you will need drivers for and download them.
Then do an upgrade of ME, this will enable you to see if all the things work, the upgrade adviser told me my modem would work but when I install found that it did not, so do an upgrade first just to check these things.
Once you are happy that everything will do, burn all the updates, new drivers, service packs, new versions of programs to CD.
Then format your drive an do a clean install.

Or keep ME and better it with 98lite

[Betamax]

Basically the app compability report is the best check to do. Print it out and check for updates for everything listed as problematic. In my personal experience modems are the most tempremental device (thanks to the "inovation" of soft modems) So spend particular attention to that.

[DB7]

I agree for the most part but found the upgrade advisor told me quite a few porkies about what would and wouldn't work, thats why I always advise an upgrade before people dive in and do a clean install.

[Betamax]

I'm not as firm a believer with the "if in doubt wipe it out" strategy here. I agree that it may workaround a few things (bloat for one), however in my option the disadvantages outweigh the benifits.

Fair enough if apps don't work it's a good solution. But you could easily uninstall them before upgrading (plus it doesn't help if any hardware relies on such programs). But the main reason I'm against it is hardware issues. Should you find that some critical piece of hardware doesn't work (modems is the prime example) you could be up the creek with no paddle. Worse is that the clean install recommends that you use NTFS, a good idea normally, but if you are inexperienced and find you have to swap back to 9x, it's one more hassle.

Basically IMHO it's better for thouse who want to check XP it see if it runs fine just to do a simple upgrade. Should anything go pear shaped, or you find you want to go back to ME for some inexplicable reason, it's only a 5 minute job to uninstall it.

Of course if you find you want to keep it and there are no problems, then the clean it out strategy is the best for "second time" installs.

[Mauros Web]

When my system goes slowly after using it about 6 months using XP I use Win98 boot disk and reformat C: partition using fdisk and then format so then i can do a clean install to winXP. Is there a way back to win9x or me, if you encounter problems using XP do the same thing I´ve done and your partition will be FAT32.