hey I really need to upgrade since a lot o stuff will work for 2000 but not ME. I don't want XP since I have 256MB (says240MB) RAM so it'll probably slow it down too much

I have the cd, when i put it in it says "Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, select a choice from the left" I believe I should do Windows 2000 Proffessional, so i click that and it asks if i want to install

thing is is that I don't want to rush into anything big like a new OS without making sure I'm doing everything right. I would like to completely upgrade and wipeout ME, but I'm not sure if I could do that. could somebody step me through this? I'm definately not a total computer newb, but I know very little on this

EDIT: this is probably the wrong section but I was unsure which one so i put it in here

Sounds like you are installing from within ME.....

If you really want to do a clean install is there anything...anything at all on the computer you want to save?

well yes, there is a lot of stuff. almost 4 or even 5 years of suff I can't remember

lots of music, family photos, some programs I have just finished burning to cd's so that's good

what I don't know how to back up is like winamp since i changed a lot to it, saved games (well i know how to save the games, but the progress through the games like unlocked places in RCT 2 IDK) from Warcraft 3, Sims, and other games I never play anymore but I still don't want to lose. there's a lot of programs like free dbpoweramp, when you try to get it now its only a trial and you have to pay so i don't want to lose that... and yea lots of stuff out of the 28GB I've used up, most of it could go though probably. is that what you recomend? reformat and install? I'm feel reluctant to doing that, I want windows 2000 so i could install and run stuff I couldn't on ME. it seems ridiculous to have to reformat and install everything all over on a computer I'll probably get rid of in another year or 2. but if that's what you recomend I'll probably do it

This post has been edited by MNOB07: Apr 28 2005, 06:22 PM

given that information, why not dual boot? That way you can ease into it...

how much harddrive space do you have left

I heard of that, sounds great but you'll still have to reinstall everything into 2000. I'll do that, like when I'm bored I can transfer files from ME to 2000 (ease into it like you said)

whats the first step? I have about 10 GB left

Well, ideally you would want them in separate partitions, but I've had good luck with windows 2000 and windows 98 on a single partition...so the question is do you want to go that way, or make a second partition.

The advantage of the two partitions is that you can format the second as ntfs, which is preferable (but the windowsme os will not be able to see the second partition).

The disadvantage is that fat32 is slightly slower for win2000 and you are not able to have the same level of local security (a non issue if you are the sole user of the pc)

would 2000 go slower than ME already does in a different partition? I want it to go any slower since I only have 1.00 Ghz 256 MB RAM especially for games. I'm the sole owner of the computer, I like the idea of two partitions and i don't know what ntfs means but it must be better than what i have now, so I'll go with 2 partitions

generally, yes, two partitions is better.

Here's the tricky part...windows cannot create two partitions from an existing single partitions..for that you need a third party utility,,,,partition magic is a commercial program that does this, but it costs some $

An alternative is qtparted, a linux-based program that looks and acts the same way....fortunately, you can run this from a linux boot cd, or better, system rescue

take a look here and see if that does not scare you too much.... if not, download and burn it to a cd.

Before you start, delete all the junk you do not want, delete temp files, run a scandisk, a thorough defrag, and then check to see that the rescue cd boots your computer....it fails on a few

http://www.sysresccd.org/

ok I'll dl the stable version when i get home, I'll be back on sometime like 5 hours or 8 hours not sure, hopefully you or someone else could help me through it

U can download partition magic in kazza, lime wire, ares, share bear, morpheus etc...
Though they are ilegal

I'll use free legal system restore to make the partition if its just as effective.

I had scan disk run, ran disk defrag all day yesterday but it kept restarting probably because I wasn't in safe mode, I might just delete some temp files and stuff and move on

after all that, what should i do, just put in the system restore disk i downloaded and boot it up? (I downloaded and burned the stable 110 MB .iso one)

This post has been edited by MNOB07: Apr 29 2005, 05:47 PM

bump, my computer broke but i fixed it, so i still want to continue this.

I saw the partition magic tutorial, and i like it a lot, this is what i want to do: split Windows ME into a primary partition for the OS, and a logical partition for the program files, desktop, games, etc. then make another, ntfs primary partition for Windows 2000 and have it use the same logical partition as Windows ME.

is this possible? hopefully the two can share the same program files, game files, desktop? please respond

This post has been edited by MNOB07: May 1 2005, 01:35 PM