I have a friend who is running ME...(I've had no dealings with it because I heard there were many bugs in it) anyway..hes finally tired of the blue screen of death...and wants to upgrade to XP.

my question is....should he get the upgrade or just do a full reformat and install the XP straight from the box...?I know your going to say format...but it doesn't hurt to hear a few ideas....and if he installs..should he use XP home or Professional.....or does that even matter

ahhh....ME, those were the good old days. I loved that OS for sum reason...lol

when u insert the cd it will aks u either to reformat or just upgrade windows...

i suggest u tell ur freind backup everything he wants, like music, documents, etc...and then do a reformat...a clean install...atleast that way u dont have to worry about trojans, worms, viruses that were in ME. Everything will be gone, and no problems at all....REFORMAT AND INSTALL IS THE BEST OPTION IMO..

There aint much diffrence between home n pro, except pro is more business suited, if he has access to professional go with xp pro...

I'd say do a format too. After a while a windows systems seems to get clogged a bit. So if you upgrade a system that has been running ME for a while you're bound to take over that stuff.

Just make sure you have a proper backup off all data ( pref an entire copy of the old disk somewhere safe )

I'd definitely not upgrade, especially not from a buggy OS as winME.
Your friend doesn't need to format, however. He just has to boot using a boot floppy, then delete his windows directory. Then he boots from the WinXP cd and installs from there. The operating system will be installed but the data on the drive will still be there (unless he does something dumb like telling the setup program to repartition the drive or something).

and change ur file systems to ntfs from fat....its better

I also suggest to do a fresh installation of XP. Don't use upgrades.

BEFOR TO DO ANY INSTALLATION DO BACKUPS OF IMPORTANT DATA

The differences between Home and Pro are nonexistant for the average user. Pro supports SMP, which your friend doesn't have. It supports Domains, which he isn't part of. And it supports more networking options he won't use.


So yes. Here's the order:

1. Backup. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
2. Boot the XP CD.
3. Tell it to reformat the hard drive using NTFS.
4. While you wait, do a ju-ju dance and ritually burn/deface/spit on the Windows ME disc.

And repeat step 4 as needed!

if, as you say his ME installation has frequent blue screens it wouldn't make it any better to upgrade it.

as others have said a backup first would be best. i would suggest something like acronis trueimage, ghost ect. i use truimage and it makes image exploring for moving things you forgot very easy. i went somewhere i shouldn't 2 weeks ago and got root'd. reloaded my image and copied over the recent stuff and back up in less than 30 minutes.

XP home is not missing a whole lot but the crippled functions in home for networking and users are enough of a pain that it wouldn't hurt to go with pro. the important thing if you are using an upgrade is that your friend does have an actual win ME (not restore) disc as the upgrade can't tell so you have to format load me then do an in place upgrade to get a clean load. full version is usually the best way to go. if you do buy the upgrade don't damage or lose the winME cd because without it your xp cd will be useless.

if you have high speed connection make sure to download all the drivers for your friend that are not included (especially printers, scanners ect ) if you do image backups you can always go back and start with your basic xp load and then build it up.

one last thing that i have seen as a tear-my-hair out issue is that some video cards (ati radeon) had some issues where they required the mbd bios to be flashed to the latest rev before upgrading. they would do the load and then first reboot would freeze with a flashing cursor in the top left and go no more. so if you run into anything like that be ready to update the mbd bios also

Dont even think of upgrading, it's not going to work smoothly (or be stable for that matter).
//Danne

cn I have I have installed the upgrade edition of XP and have never had to install Me first instead during the install process it asks for you to insert the Me disc just to check and then asks for XP doisc to be put back in and off it goes.

Yes, you can use "upgrade version" windows, just make sure to have your original ME disc on hand during the install so it can verify that you own it. Microsoft knew full well that an "upgrade install" was a bad idea.

But there have been valid points raised here:

1. Make sure your motherboard is flashed to the latest version. I always forget that not everyone knows about this. Your motherboard, your optical drives... have firmware that needs updating from time to time.

2. Did we mention to backup?

The only conclusion I ever came to with Windows ME... was that its the only software I know that containes the 'Millennium bug'.

VH

If you can always make a clean install to an erased Hard Drive, you don't want to have to do it twice.
ME was never very good from the start.
Hope you can save your files
GOOD LUCK

Upgrade over fully working is questionable, upgrade over a wonky system is a terrible idea.

If the drive can be taken to completely clean, then I'd also suggest running the drive manufacturers diagnostics in a fairly aggressive mode.

You'll find many of them ready to run, on thge Ultimate boot CD
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

Though I downloaded the latest ones from the maker's site, in floppy IMG form, and replaced them - you can also add extra ones by following the instructions.

yes, you can, with a real winME disc. however; most oem computers back then used "restore" discs which essentially put a manufacturer's load on the computer. since they were an image type restore they did not have the files that ms uses to validate an upgrade. at that time M$ was pushing hard for all OEM's to make their disc's restore disc so that they could be locked to a machine instead of like win98 which allowed you to install on anything. the oem discs now are bios locked so they will not install on a system that does not have the motherboard that that was produced at the same time as the cd : read more here

thats what i told him....thanks you guys .....but there really isn't anything on his drive that needs to be backed up....so this week i'll do the install......and flash his bios and see what happens..