Going from Windows 2000 to XP...fresh or upgrade?

[Xylo]

I have been putting together a new system. First new one in a long time...
Here's the situation...I have:
- old IDE HD w/ Windows 2000 and all my stuff on it
- new unused SATA HD

I'd like to upgrade to Windows XP...and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. A couple of different possibilities:

[1] Hook up the old HD, copy it over to the new, and either before or after the copy, upgrade to Windows XP.

[2] Do a fresh install of Windows XP.on my new HD, and....ugh...reinstall everything???...slowly copy over stuff from my old HD?

Now, on my old HD I have a TON of stuff installed. And the prospect of reinstalling program after program so the registry is all proper and what not, and manually sifting through configuration files and what not for various programs to copy them over so I don't lose all my configurations and what not....ugh, it just sounds like a nightmare.

Yet, the copy of Windows 2000 is old, and if I remember correctly, was already an upgrade from Win98. I have a hunch it's pretty grungy and that there's a lot of unnecessary stuff. So I'd really *like* a fresh install...


So what's my best bet?...Is there some option I've missed?...Is there any way to start off with a fresh install of WinXP without having to extremely painstakingly reconstruct everything over....?.... If not, is the benefits of a fresh install really worth it? Would an upgrade suffice?


Thanks for any input...
Xylo

 

[prozac26]

you can use old HDD for data and run xp from there. you can upgrade, unless you dont mind getting rid of all your stuff and install them all over again. upgrading would be bad at all, unless you got viruses and what not.

AMD Athlon 1GHz CPU
384 PC100 RAM
ATI Radeon 9550se 256mb agp
Generic DVD-ROM
LG CD-RW
Generic 40gb HDD IDE
Windows ME
HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW!?!?!?!?!

 

[jiffy]

You could do option one and if you don’t like it go to option two, unless this order screws up taking things off the old drive after updating it. If you have a ton of stuff and I know that feeling of having to reload. Do you need all those programs or do you need them right away? Maybe you don’t need them all and that can be answered by what you still frequently use. You can load a few at a time when you feel like it, which then won’t be as bad, assuming you don’t need them all right away. I would reinstall windows fresh and use the old drive as storage while I’m straitening everything out, but I think you would be best to answer your own question, since you will have to do all the work and seem to know what you would have to do either way.

 

[sturm]

If your wanting to put this drive in a new system and not the origional then you pretty much ahve to do a fresh install. Unless windows 2000 can load up on a different motherboard than what it was installed on, a fresh install is needed.
Plus a fresh install will give you a nice clean system to start out with. Who knows what kind of cobwebs and other bad stuff could be lurking in that old install.

 

[blah]

""Going from Windows 2000 to XP"" = stupid.

But in any case, fresh install of XP will be best case scenario to begin with.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[joe_tlj]

Unless you have the old system that Windows 2000 came on, you're stuck with doing a fresh install (which is not a bad thing) But if your really set on doing as little as possible (and have that old PC), I think there's something you can do.

1. Pop the old HDD back into it's familar environment.

2. Install XP onto it with the upgrade option.

3. Pop it into your new PC.

4. Do a Windows XP repair install (I'm not sure, but I think this will work).

5. Use some disk cloning tool to copy IDE HDD to SATA HDD.

Mission accomplished! Your crusty file system has been preserved for the next generation of troubleshooters!

But if you want a more trouble-free OS, do a fresh install. It makes a big difference. They are addictive though. I was addicted to fresh installs; it cost me my first HDD. Too much reformatting. :frown:


There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Joe_tlj on 08/16/05 01:40 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[merk]

i did an upgrade install when xp came out just to try it. It seemed to work well. But, in the end i did a fresh install. I think it would be worth taking the time to do the fresh install.

Although, you might want to consider holding off on doing this. The next version of windows, vista (was called longhorn) will probably be coming out next year. So if you havent already bought the xp disc and if you dont have a real reason to upgrade, might want to wait a while and just go with vista when its released.

 

[riser]

But then you need to remember.. it's over a year away then you have to wait another 6-8 months for the first service pack to come out to fix all the problems.

Then again, with XP under their belt, Vista might just pull it off.

 

[merk]

thats all true. Just seems to me that if you've waited this long to upgrade to xp, you might as well wait a little longer if something is on the horizon thats going to replace it.

And from my experience with xp, i dont recall there being anything (for me) that made me regret using it until the service pack came out. The only real significant bug i can remember was the wireless networking. I'm not saying there werent other significant bugs. Just that i didnt happen to get hit with them (or have forgotten them).

Were it me, and i didnt have some compelling reason to need to upgrade win2k ... i'd stay with it and wait for vista.

 

[riser]

I'll probably switch to vista when the working version comes out.. just because I like a lot of the features in it and the enhanced security.. it's good to know.
I think XP will be around just as long as 2k though.

I get my OS's free through work and our licensing with Microsoft, so it doesn't matter to me what OS I use.

Vista looks promising though..

 

[merk]

i'll probably switch because i'm a geek and its new

I was pretty impressed with both win2k and xp. I beta tested both and found them both to be pretty stable in the beta. more so once they were released.

beta testing vista now ... it seems buggier then 2k/xp were. But its only beta 1.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Since your Beta testing Vista. Any big improvements over 2000/XP?

 

[merk]

in the current beta version, not really. The next beta release is supposed to have more of the bells and whistles that vista is supposed to ship with. Right now a lot of the stuff is disabled/not installed. I think this beta is primarily to test compatability with other programs... find out what wont run on vista, etc.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Ya same thing with the new hotmail I'm testing. No spell check.

 

[blah]

Don't you have a word processor to "spell check"? whata crapp.. "no spell check = bad email client".. sigh. Yeah and by the way, Vista is the same crapp as XP was over 2000, nothing spesual as far as usability goes, just much more eye candy and bugs that will crapp system down so much, that you'll need P4-4G+2GB of mem to even start the thing..

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[TheCh0s3n1]

Don't you have a word processor to "spell check"? whata crapp.. "no spell check = bad email client".. sigh. Yeah and by the way, Vista is the same crapp as XP was over 2000, nothing spesual as far as usability goes, just much more eye candy and bugs that will crapp system down so much, that you'll need P4-4G+2GB of mem to even start the thing..

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

Spell Check is your <i>friend</i>.

_____________
<i>There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary
and those who don't</i>

 

[HardWareBoss]

Are you Beta testing Vista?

 

[blah]

I did work on XP (well, Wistler at that time) and do not wish to waste my precious time on garbage anymore. Me wait till socond Vista service pack, then I'll give it a try, maybe.. till then 2k will do, it gets the job done just fine.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...