[SharonMurray]

I've had my Windows 2000 pc for about 3 years. The spec is still good, but peformance has been poor for quite some time - even before I got virus last year whcih took me months to clear.

With the acquisition of a new laptop, I've recently moved from an external broadband modem to a wireless router and although both machines have been fine for a while, the windows 2000 PC has not been able to connect for over a week now, and given the performance problems I've been having, I've decided to upgrade to Windows XP. (The XP machine isn't having any problems, so its got to be something to do with the W2k machine).

The thing is, I don't know if there are any nasties still lying around from last year's virus that might be causing the poor performance, and I've been thinking that the best thing to do will be to reformat my hard drive.

Has anyone got any advice about whether reformatting will help, or if it's likely to cause more problems than it solves? Should I upgrade first and see if that improves performance, and only re-format if it doesn't? What pitfalls should I look out for if I just upgrade without reformatting?

I'm planning to do this at the end of next week, and I'd really appreciate some advice. The PC should still have some life left in it but it's getting to be a pain to use.

Thanks,
Sharon,
Chester

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General rule of thumb is to wipe it and put XP on the empty drive.

If you have issues with the Win2K setup now, upgrading it to XP will only carry those issues over to XP.

[Neil Jones]

General rule of thumb is to wipe it and put XP on the empty drive.

If you have issues with the Win2K setup now, upgrading it to XP will only carry those issues over to XP.

[SharonMurray]

Hi neil,

Thanks for the advice. I'll reformat the disk then, in the hope that performance will improve. But this is going to be something new for me. Are there any guides out there about reformatting and upgrading to XP? If I reformat, will I need to re-install W2k again to upgrade to XP, or do I just install staright from the upgrade disk?

Thanks again,
Sharon

[SRX660]

If you are using a upgrade CD you will need the windows 2000 cd to show that you had a previous operating system on the computer. A win 2000 upgrade cd will not work. I usually use a win ME oem cd i have to be able to use customers upgrade cd's. I set the bios to boot from the cdrom drive , put the XP cd in the drive, and reboot the computer. XP will start loading and ask you for the previous OS cd.

SRX660

[SharonMurray]

Thanks SRX660,

I've got the oem disk that cam with the PC, so that should be OK. I'm planning to do this later next week, so I'm going to dig out all the installation disks etc for the hardware and sofwtare before I start. I've also found a guide (of sorts) on the MS website, so I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope all goes well.

If not, there's a PC support shop in the centre of town....

Thanks again,
Sharon
Chester