Computer Woes

[gunny]

Spent the day trying to install Window XP on a machine that originally came with 98. Documentation indicates it should work, its a 333 mHz machine, 4 gig HD. Cleaned up the HD and went at it. Gives an error message telling me I need at least 1740 meg of free space on the drive, got 1793. Anybody out here get me on the right track? Spent most of the day with it and getting frustrated. Want to put XP on it to enable usage of WiFi, can't do it with 98.

[JPSpen]

If if says you only have 1794 MB of space on a 4 gb drive, then it's probably partitioned into two logical drives. C and D. There should be spot in the xp install that will let you delete the partitions and then it will create a new partition on the empty space...this should give you the full capacity of the drive.
But I've got to tell you that even with a butt load of ram it's gonna be slower than snot on a cold night...

Call me if you want and We'll walk through it.....

John

[scottydawg]

As cheap as you can get a new desktop now I think you would be much happier with the speed of a new machine with Windoze XP preloaded. If you use your existing monitor I bet you can get something for $400 which isn't a lot more then buying the XP upgrade software.
If you really want to make XP work on that machine for now the best thing to do is reformat the Hard Drive which can be done when you first boot up with the XP CD. I would use the NT file system and only create one partition.

[messenger13]

I'm betting you're going to need to beef-up the RAM in that old 98 box too. WinXP isn't even close to happy unless you have 256MB minimum. 378MB is more like the actual minimum. I have a gig or more in my XP boxes.

When you do get it installed, make sure you go into the Control Panel > System > "Advanced" tab > under "Performance", click on the "Settings" button...then select "Adjust for best performance". That will make that old box run WAY faster. Especially with it being only a 333.

HTH

[Dezrae]

XP loves buckts of RAM, soaks it all up and actually gives a good performance on the slowest of cpu's with 1 gig of ram, even the faster cpus just *LOVE* one gig of ram

[JPSpen]

Gunny,
I hope things worked out for you.. If you run into any hitches on they way, Just give me a call...I agree get at least 512 in it or a gig if it'll take it...

Spence

[dshealey]

Hard drives are so cheap now that there is no good reason to stick with a small one if you are having problems with space.

I recently upgraded my old P II, 400 Mhz machine to XP. A little slow, but works just fine. I had not long ago upgraded my old 10 Gig hard drive to a 40 Gig. 40 Gig drives are now about $45.

[meese]

I hear WalMart is now selling laptops for $387. But you'd probably better be armed while trying to buy one. ;)