# XP Upgrade Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2003, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170 "2003-06-24T23:33:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MIKE\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@MIKE\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MIKE_P)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/1 "2003-06-24T23:33:15Z")
I have Windows ME and would like to upgrade to XP Home edition. If I buy the Upgrade and then do a clean install, do I require the ME cd? My computer came with ME preloaded and only a Compaq recovery cd. :smack: Any help is appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/2 "2003-06-24T23:35:45Z")
No, it will upgrade your existing OS without needing the original OS install CD. Except for the fact that your machine is a Compaq, you should be fine. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Why\_A\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/13edae/32.png) [@Why\_A\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_A_Duck)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/3 "2003-06-24T23:38:39Z")
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure it will ask for the ME disk just to make sure you’re on the up-and-up. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/4 "2003-06-24T23:40:12Z")
Pretty sure. The only time I’ve seen an upgrade CD install barf is if you try to run it on an empty HDD with no qualifying OS installed. ---
**Author:** ![Why\_A\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/13edae/32.png) [@Why\_A\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_A_Duck)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/5 "2003-06-24T23:42:32Z")
That’s what I thought Mikey meant by a clean install. When I went that path, I fdisk’d and formatted my HD just to wipe that abomination known as ME from my house. ---
**Author:** ![Hauky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/0ea827/32.png) [@Hauky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hauky)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/6 "2003-06-24T23:46:32Z")
If you install over it, no, it won’t ask for the ME CD. If you do a clean install (presumably by formatting your OS partition), it will ask for the ME CD. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/7 "2003-06-24T23:47:20Z")
Agreed that purchasing full install version and starting fresh would be best. However, the compaq restore CD has proprietary drivers that may not be available otherwise. Compaqs are very fussy like that. It’s sort of a Catch-22: if he buys the full install and needs drivers, he can’t run the retore CD and install the factory software and then upgrade. Why the full version won’t upgrade an existing OS, I’ll never understand, but that’s Microsoft. ---
**Author:** ![MIKE\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@MIKE\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MIKE_P)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/8 "2003-06-24T23:53:57Z")
What I meant about clean install was that one of the options on the XP upgrade disk is to format the HD and then install XP and another is to just to install right over the old OS but is generally not recommended. I got my info from here: [http://www.zolknetwork.com/winxp\_install.php](http://www.zolknetwork.com/winxp_install.php) ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/9 "2003-06-24T23:56:02Z")
You can try that route. Worst-case scenario is you have to run the Compaq restore CD to install drivers, then run the XP upgrade again to install over the existing OS. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2003, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/10 "2003-06-24T23:57:29Z")
Oh and to be absolutely safe, DO NOT allow Windows XP setup to format the drive as NTFS until you are sure the new installation will work and support all your hardware. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/11 "2003-06-25T15:16:37Z")
Yeah, check the hardware & software compatibility charts first. Im pretty sure if you install it, it gives you the option of installing a dual boot system so you can check what works. ---
**Author:** ![chutwig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@chutwig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chutwig)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/12 "2003-06-25T15:34:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Q.E.D. \* > \*\*Oh and to be absolutely safe, DO NOT allow Windows XP setup to format the drive as NTFS until you are sure the new installation will work and support all your hardware. \*\* Uh, why? The only reason at all to not use NTFS for everything right off the bat is if you’re dual-booting with Linux or a version of Windows (95, 98, Me) that can’t read/write (or in Linux’s case write without destroying) NTFS. I am curious to hear your reasoning as to why anyone would want to do otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/13 "2003-06-25T15:42:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by chutwig \* > \*\*Uh, why? The only reason at all to not use NTFS for everything right off the bat is if you’re dual-booting with Linux or a version of Windows (95, 98, Me) that can’t read/write (or in Linux’s case write without destroying) NTFS. > > I am curious to hear your reasoning as to why anyone would want to do otherwise. \*\* Because his Compaq restore disk uses ME and cannot read from or write to an NTFS partition, so if he needs to recover using that for some reason, he’s screwed. It _may_ be able to reformat as FAT32, but why take the chance? I thought that was obvious. Once he’s sure the system is running smoothly, he can convert to NTFS. ---
**Author:** ![chutwig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@chutwig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chutwig)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/14 "2003-06-25T16:29:18Z")
Zuh? Restore disks as they exist now just contain an image of the operating system, not the actual installable version, a change that was mandated by Microsoft a few years ago. Whatever is on the hard drive is not relevant, because it will all be overwritten anyway by the static image, no matter what the filesystem. There is no reason whatsoever to create newly formatted partitions as anything but NTFS. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/15 "2003-06-25T16:30:44Z")
My Suse 8.2 installation reads/writes NTFS partitions. Uh, I’m not screwing up anything by letting it do that, right? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/16 "2003-06-25T16:34:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by chutwig \* > \*\*Zuh? > > Restore disks as they exist now just contain an image of the operating system, not the actual installable version, a change that was mandated by Microsoft a few years ago. Whatever is on the hard drive is not relevant, because it will all be overwritten anyway by the static image, no matter what the filesystem. There is no reason whatsoever to create newly formatted partitions as anything but NTFS. \*\* You want to explain to me how the OS kernel on the restore disk is going to write a drive image if it diesn’t know how to handle the file system? ---
**Author:** ![Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rex_fenestrarum/32/7265_2.png) [@Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rex_Fenestrarum)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/17 "2003-06-25T17:03:31Z")
Sure. The “OS kernel” writes to a disk by… ignoring the file system on the current disk. Or did it never occur to you that it doesn’t even _need_ a file system on the disk? That’s the whole point behind Ghost - it’s disk cloning software. It wouldn’t be much good if you had to format the hard drives first _then_ put the image on them, now would it? I know most of the OEM restore CDs don’t use Ghost to restore from image, but the principle is the same. ---
**Author:** ![chutwig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@chutwig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chutwig)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/18 "2003-06-25T20:48:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Q.E.D. \* > \*\*You want to explain to me how the OS kernel on the restore disk is going to write a drive image if it diesn’t know how to handle the file system? \*\* You are apparently woefully misinformed either on how restore disks work, how filesystems are represented on a hard drive, or both. Imagine that these brackets represent a hard drive, with - being blank space. This is a nice fresh hard drive, completely unformatted: [--------------------] Now let’s format the hard drive with some arbitrary filesystem, like NTFS. Just to keep it spicy and for no reason, let’s make two partitions of arbitrary sizes. The m represents the MBR, or Master Boot Record, and the parentheses represent partitions. [m(--------------)(------)] Now we have a hard drive with two partitions. We fill it up with crap, like so. [m(xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)(xxxxxx)] But oops! We bollixed something up, and now we have to format. Alas, all we have is the restore CD that came with the computer. We pop it in and image the restore image back to disk. The restore image is an exact bit-by-bit copy of the hard drive contents. We’ll denote the restore image with {}. {m(xxx)} + [m(xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)(xxxxxx)] = [m(xxx-----------------)]. A very simplified explanation, but you get the idea, I hope. It doesn’t matter what’s on the disk, the restore disc will overwrite it all anyway with the image it has. More complex imaging software, like Ghost, can also make inline changes to the image as it’s being written, which allows, for example, an image taken from a smaller disk to be expanded onto a larger disk. ---
**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/19 "2003-06-25T21:55:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Agreed that purchasing full install version and starting fresh would be best. From what I understand, the _full_ and _upgrade_ version are identical, save the upgrade version asks for proof of an acceptable previous product. Either way, I own the “upgrade” version and do clean installs (wipe the HD) about every 6 months. Never had a problem, goes slicker than snot. I far prefer installing XP versus any of MS’s previous products. ---
**Author:** ![Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rex_fenestrarum/32/7265_2.png) [@Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rex_Fenestrarum)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2003, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xp-upgrade-question/184170/20 "2003-06-26T02:44:27Z")
[quote] which allows, for example, an image taken from a smaller disk to be expanded onto a larger disk. [quote] Yeah, that’s a feature that I really like. I have 4 HDDs in my system and when I upgraded the “main” disk from 30 to 60GB, I used Ghost to image it all over. I have three partitions on the drive and kept the first two at their original size and expanded the third (NTFS) one to fill the rest of the new disk. Ghost r00lz me!