XP Upgrade Glitches
 

My HOS (to be read: Hunk Of Shit) from Dell came installed with Windows ME which was God Awful. I then Upgraded to XP using an upgrade version not a full install. Has anybody heard of any glitches using this method (not in the install itself but in use afterwards). Completely random I will click on certain likes My Documents or Winamp and my system will temporary freeze, the screen will black for a second and everything comes back to "normal." Its not a major problem but it is annoying and worrisome. I am just guessing that it might be the upgrade and I am wondering if it might be worth the $100 to get the full version of Home XP. Thoughts, suggestions, etc. would all be incredibly helpful. Thanks.

I hate upgrades, I would sugest giveing this a try if you don't mind the format..... I have head it works with 98 ME and 2k but wasn't sure if it was still possible with xp... I found a website with and artical saying it was... Maybe it will save you some cash since you should have a restore cd that came with the dell....

An Upgrade CD will do a perfectly clean install even on a new formatted Hard Drive. First it looks for installed components, does not fine any, Setup will ask you to insert a CD with a previous version of Windows such as any version of WIN98 to verify that you owe a previous version, after a few seconds Setup will ask to swap the CDs and VIOLA, it will do a clean install. Same is true with Win98 Upgrade that wants to see a WIN95 CD and a WIN95 Upgrade CD wants to see a few diskettes from WIN3.1 etc.

Back when XP came out, I bought it the very first day. I had a Dell running ME at the time, and I didn't feel like doing a full install. I did the upgrade and there were Z.E.R.O. problems with it. In fact, it ran perfect for over a year before I went to a new PC and XP Pro.

I did an XP Pro Update version on my puter from ME and It Installed perfectly, No Conflicts or anything...It runs very smooth.

I seem to remember _not_ being able to do a clean install with an XP upgrade disk but that was early last year so my memory might be a little fuzzy.

I have installed XP Home upgrade on a clean hard disk. At a certain point in the install early on it asks you to put a cd from a previous approved version of Windows in the drive before it lets the install continue.

Edit: I was upgrading from ME so it *should* work for you if you want to try it.

What happens if Win 98 or Me came with your computer so you do legally own it, but you don't actually have the OS CD? Most big manufacturers don't include actual OS CDs.

From my official experience as a system administrator, I've run into a lot of problems that were caused by the fact that the user in question upgraded from 9x/ME to 2k/XP through the "upgrade" process rather than a clean install of Windows.

I personally would not recommend upgrading a current version of Windows to a new one -- but that's me. If you want to, best of luck. I'd say that you're much better off, in terms of eliminating future problems, by just starting from scratch.

Sure, you might be lucky and have no problems -- but you might also get a lot of problems and end up having to reinstall down the line. Better to do so when you want, not when Windows blows up.

IMHO, Start from scratch. You then know exactly what process you are following in terms of the installation and eliminate the "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" installation.

Also helps in doing things from scratch to avoid any possible OS conflicts.

you should have a restore cd that came with your computer, if nor call dell, orf i thinkn if you put the disk in inside windows it will upgrade from there but ask if you want a clean install or the upgrade....

Under 256mb of memory usually makes XP run like shit with my previous experiences.