[Greg]

Well, I've got my G4 Tower and Notebook upgraded to the latest OSX, .Mac and .Life. Time to tackle the ol' Windoooze machines. I found a brand new Windows XP Home pack that I bought and put on the shelf (for some reason). Figure I'd install it on all my PCs and try to make some kinda standard system here at home.

I have an old e.Machine and several HP Pavilions and one machine that I think was my server a few offices ago. I also have an ICOM that I got about 5 years ago (It's my newest PC machine).

I used Windows 2000 before and had a lot of problems with it. Is XP going to be better? More stable? Easier to use, without being like "Bob"?

Anything I should know/do first? Still stay away from the SP2? I would like to erase the HD and get a clean start on the XP.

Scared.......

Greg

 

[MowHoward2210]

I guess the XP Home pack allows you to install XP on multiple machines? Also make sure your machines meet the minimum requirements. XP is a memory hog just like OSX is, so make sure you have the minimum ram requirement. I would do a clean install.

I would put SP2 on the machines only if you are going to put your machines on the net and use IE as your browser. The way I understand it, some 3rd party apps used some of the security holes in Windows to make their programs work. So when you install SP2 some of those apps won't work right. I'm not sure how common that is, though. Note, you can use an alternative browser such as Mozilla Firefox instead of IE.

 

[CatDaddy]

IMO, XP is the cat's ass of Windows OSes! No where near as f'ed up/buggy as the older OSes.

A reformat & clean install is the best way to go. I hope you have at least 128MB of RAM though. XP will run on less, but not very smoothly. Also, use a HDD of at least 10GB or you'll run out of room too soon. (Even though the box says you only need 1.5GB to do an install, SP1 & 2 - plus other updates and config files/etc. will really suck up about 3.5 GB. And that's before you install anything else.)

Install XP, then go online & do SP1 and SP2, then do any remaining updates. Once that's done you can install the rest of your software. Antivirus would be my next choice, followed by AdAware & Spybot, then whichever office suite you plan on using. After you're done run 'Disk Cleanup' & do a defrag. Of course, I'd do that after installing the OS too, but I'm kinda weird that way.

Don't worry about SP2 unless you're running some sort of proprietary software that connects you to a network through some bizzare port assignment, you shouldn't have any problems. If you do have any conflicts, you can always "allow an exception" for that software via the firewall dialogue box.

I just installed SP2 on my kid's machine Thursday after testing it on my primary machine. I haven't had any problems with it on our home network or the internet either. It's an old Dell L866r (a P-III) but I have 512MB of RAM in it. It'll run all their old edu-tainment software written for Win98 w/o problems.

My wordy 2 cents worth.
HTH!
Angel

 

[CatDaddy]

Originally posted by MowHoward2210
I guess the XP Home pack allows you to install XP on multiple machines?

XP (Home or Pro) is only licensed for a single machine per box, unless you bought a '3-pack' distro. Installation on additional machines, although not an insurmountable problem, would be less than legal/ethical.

Originally posted by MowHoward2210 Note, you can use an alternative browser such as Mozilla Firefox instead of IE.

Mozilla is my browser of choice. I only use IE to do Windows Updates or if I absolutely must view a page that only supports IE.

-=A=-

 

[Greg]

Thanks,

I burned a copy of the OS and am trying it now. I am only putting it on the machines I have here at the house to run ONLY 1 at a time... My wife doesn't even use the computer.

I do not plan on using IE. Mozilla or Firefox seem much better.

Had problems reading/writing to "C" so I un-installed Norton Utilities. Hope that works....

 

[Greg]

Well, it seems to be working.....

I spent a lot of time just trying to figure out what it was doing and trying to figure out where a file was it wanted... Installation is REAL klunky! They still have you in DOS half the time!!??

I'm downloading Firefox right now. Downloader program seems the same as in Win 95. I did get my TEAC RW drive up and running. How do I check to see of the built-in CD drive is RW? When I go to Explorer, it shows the TEAC as drive "D" but doesn't show the internal CD drive. I loaded XP from the internal.

Thanks,

Greg