I’m taking a class at a community college for both work and personal reasons, and one of the nice things about taking classes there is the ability to ‘check out’ Microsoft software. Last year I took some programming and got Visio, C++, etc, all for free, basically.
I’m learning websites now too, and know that certain things (messageboards perhaps?) require Win XP Pro rather than Home and so I’m wondering two things.
Should I ‘upgrade’ since I can for free and
will Pro suck up much of my system resources? Will it be worth it later on perhaps?
I’ve got 2001 Dell, 1Ghz, 512 ram, machine that has treated me well.
If you can upgrade for free, then yes, by all means do so. No, it doesn’t suck up that much mroe resources. I ran XP Pro on my 700 Mhz, 256 MB (i think it was 256 ) IBM T20 just fine, so you should be even more just fine.
I “upgraded” for about $200 since I was told by an affiliate I needed XP Pro to run some of their software. Besides the cost it wiped out all of my device drivers and has somehow permanently disabled my ability to use Wireless LANs. It has, so far as I know, no benefits, since it later turned out I could have used the affiliate’s software with XP Home. YMMV.
But net, what I did learn is that if you do or must go from XP Home to Pro, back up your data and do XP with a clean, new installation. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Too late for me.
According to “Windows XP Pro-The Missing Manual”, Pro offers the following over home:
Remote Desktop, Corporate domain membership, Administrative shares of folders, Remote Installation Service, Acknowledgement of high-horsepower chips, Offline file access/mod, Roaming profiles, Group and local policy settings, Individual file protection, NTFS permissions, Internet information services, and Dynamic disks.
Control Panel
Network connections
Properties of WIreless Network Connection
“Wireless Networks” tab
Upper left hand corner “Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings”
and deselect the box.
Intel has their own app in the control panel that runs the NIC.
Service Pack Two added some wireless stuff, but I’ve not had to mess with it.
See, part of my problem is, it doesn’t even show “Wireless Network Connection” anymore. It’s just gone. I think the cat’s eaten it. Of course I don’t seem to have the option to switch views, either. But I seem to be in Classic View anyway.
That sounds pretty grim.
Can you see the wireless card in Hardware Manager?
You might try buying a cheap new wireless NIC.
You might try backing up all your stuff and reinstall beginning with FDISK.
Well, I can’t see the Centrino wireless chip anymore. Which would be okay, since I also have two wireless cards, but XP won’t recognise either or the device drivers for them. Lost both in my XP upgrade, they worked fine before that.
Download the install files of all the software you commonly use (another good chance to upgrade), note any particular customized options you use (config files, cookies, user profiles, theme settings, etc), GO TO MICROSOFT’S SITE AND DOWNLOAD THE MANUAL UPGRADES TO BRING YOU UP TO SERVICE PACK 2, Sort through all your music/pictures/movies/documents and pick what you want to keep.
Burn all of the above files to CDs.
Disconnect computer from all networks.
Install XP Pro.
Install the windows updates to bring up up to SP2.
Reconnect the computer to a network if you wish.
Install all the other crap, trying to keep it organized this time.
Re-download all the stuff you forgot to keep.
If you do choose to reformat the disk… keep in mind you could also re-partition the disk and keep the partition with Windows on it seperate from all your MP3s and porn… making it easier to upgrade in the future without losing all your crap or having to pull it off a back-up CD.
Actually, I just upgraded my wife’s HP ze4300 laptop from home to XP. A simple upgrade, set a restore point in case of troubles, and upgraded. I’ve finally got everything installed properly, and it’s workin fine. Didn’t back anything to CD, the wlan works the same as it did before the upgrade. XP seems to have better networking capabilities (just from experience, no cite) but otherwise, not much difference.
