I’m in the process of upgrading a Dell 4100 from windows ME to Windows XP pro. The issue is that at the present time, the computer is pretty hammered with worms. I figure that since I will have backed up anything important when I do the upgrade, I might as well reformat the machine too, and blow away the critters that are slowing the machine down.
Anyway, my question is this: I’m petty familiar with reformatting Windows 98 machines, but I haven’t ever reformatted any machines with ME or XP. Is the process pretty much the same? Do I still need a boot disk, and if so, do I still need to include the drivers for the CD to function?
From my experience, upgrading to XP is alot easier than fixing 98. I just tried this last night on my friend’s machine. 98 wouldn’t format for me or anything, I had to use other programs to format.
With XP, you pop the disk in, make sure your BIOS is set to boot from CD, follow the instructions on the machine and you’re good to go! It will wipe the drive for you, and change the filesystem to NTFS too.
You may have to set your boot order to boot from CD drive then after that XP will take care of the format. Thats the way I have done it on my machines but they are not Dell’s. You can use the boot disk method. Use the type that has generic cd drivers.
As mentioned, XP can boot from CD and format automatically. However, I usually use a Win98 boot disk to start the computer and then use FDISK for a nice clean drive. I then use FDISK to create my partitions (WinXP can never seem to create a full partition, it always leaves 8mb of “unused space”) and then, after rebooting with the floppy in, I’ll reformat and then reboot again and install XP from the CD. It’s probably several steps more than I need but the computer doesn’t seem to mind…
I would also usually boot from a win98 boot disk and wipe the disk from there, then partition and format, and then boot from the XP CD. I don’t have any real good reason to do it that way either. It’s just a question of personal preference for me.
I also would leave the drive formatted as FAT32. If XP goes belly up for some reason you can boot from a floppy and access the drive. Accessing NTFS partitions from a boot floppy is possible, but it’s not as easy to do.
Another thing to consider is that ME to XP is crossing product lines. ME is part of the “windows” product line (95, 98, and ME). XP is part of the “NT” product line (NT 4, 2000, XP). These operating systems are very different under the hood, and you can have serious compatibility problems in your hardware and software. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t upgrade, just be aware that some of your hardware and software may not work. Some people have reported no problems at all. Some people had the opposite experience and couldn’t get anything of theirs to work under XP. I had the rather curious result that all of the software I had that was made by microsoft worked fine, and everything I had that was made by someone else didn’t. YMMV.
Here is a site that shows the prompts, questions, and options you’ll see as you install XP, including the disk-partitioning and formatting options. It even has a URL to download a boot floppy in case you can’t boot from CD-ROM.