One for XP-erts

[Steve Maskery]

Morning all,
In the spirit of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, I've continued to use Windows 98 and Office 97 up til now.
But it's getting to the point where the Blue Screen of Death is appearing more and more often, everything is slow, and the final straw is that I have a program to install which won't run on 98, it needs 2000 or XP.

Does anyone have experience of having XP as the operating system, but using Office 97? I don't want to upgrade to OfficeXP as it means changing the structure of my Access applications, which work nicely and I'd like to keep them that way.

I'd just like to know what I'm letting myself in for if I do decide to upgrade.

I have an Athlon 600 system with half a gig of RAM.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Steve

Win 98 was built on top of 16 bit DOS as a home use operating - regardless of the hype and misleading info you may read it is not a full 32-bit operating system.

XP is built on 32-bit NT and has always been Windows, never DOS. It runs in 'virtual machines' and has a very sophisticated HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) which means that it is VERY difficult to crash. The memory management of 32-bit NT based systems means that each application runs in it's own virtual space and if the application crashes, it does not take out the OS.

I would class myself as a 'power user' and very knowledgeable about PCs and would unhesitatingly recommend Windows XP over 98.
I have 7 ( ) PCs running Win XP Home, Win XP Pro, Win 2000 and 20 in my lab running Win98/Win 2000 dual boot.

The XP machines have never crashed and never shown the blue screen. That is not to say that they do not crash, just that I have not crashed any of mine over the last 18 months with XP

I haven't run office 97 on it, only office 2000, XP and 2003 and all run fine.

Hope this is of some help

 

[Midnight]

Steve...

Just a grunts eye view from a guy who's been in your situation. I upgraded to XP about 9 months ago, and while I agree with Tony that it's a fr more stable platform, I've found that stability came at a hellova price, literally. To start with, XP certification or the lack of it meant that I'd to upgrade my scanner, printer and modem; XP simply refused to have anything to do with the drivers for the old stuff. Additionally, I've lost count of the applications I can no longer run for the same reason. Granted, XP has a facility where it can emulate 98 in order to run a program, but its been my experience that very few applications will run like this.
The other major difference between the two that I've found is that I'm no longer in control of my system; I can't go into system tools and switch off applications that auto-installed as part of an upgrade (have you ever tried installing Netscape without AOL's IM package or Real player..??) With XP, I dont have access to that level, in spite of telling the OS that I'm the system administrator.
Like I said, it's stability is refreshing, but it's not bullet proof. If I were in your position, given what I know now, I honestly don't know what I would do. You may well be better served by upgrading to Win 2000, in site of Microsquirt's imminent ending of product development for it; it's probably a lot closer to being compatable with your current hardware.

Sorry if this has muddied the water.....

 

[Anonymous]

Steve

Mike's points are valid up to a point and depend largely on the version of XP one has. Pro gives all the control you could wish for.

As for software, I have about 40 games that have been bought for the kids (and me) over the last 6-7 years and EVERY one of them runs under XP without any tweaking. I have had no problems with any applications I used to run under win 98SE and found drivers for alll of my printers etc. were already within XP.
I would say that unless your scanner, printer etc. is more than 4 years old there should be no problems - check for new drivers (2000, XP) on the websites before upgrading operating systems.

Likewise for software, clearly it is not reasonable to expect software written specifically for windows 95 to run on XP without some issues when you consider the timeframe between releases and the speed of technological change.

When i buy a new piece of kit, it invariably installs into XP without me even inserting a CD - it is a new experience you'll like.

If you need drivers for some hardware, then Windows 2000 drivers will work fine under XP as XP is largley built on Win 2000.

Whatever you decide, good luck

 

[Guest]

If you visit the Microsoft website you can do a compatability test on your computer to see what will and won't work.I had to change my scanner but everything else works.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi guys

Thanks very much for the input.

I've spent the afternoon doing it, and I have to say I am flabergasted! Everything has installed properly first time, not had to re-install any applications, just my scanner and webcam with updated drivers. Everything seems to work! I can get at all my documents, drawings and databases (a relief, as my accounts are in Access!).
And everything seems so fast to boot!

Cheers
Steve
One Happy Chappy!

 

[Chris Knight]

Steve,
Glad it worked for you - it really is miles better than the older systems. If XP's drivers don't work - which is unusual, manufacturers' sites usually have new drivers available.

I DO SUGGEST THE FOLLOWING though!!!

Make a backup image of your installation as it is now before you install anything else with some suitable software like Drive Image or Acronis True Image, so that when it inevitably all goes pear-shaped on some future occasion, you can get back to where you are now.

 

[Neil]

Also, Steve, if you are going online from this PC, make sure you apply all the security patches from Microsoft ASAP as the XP/Win2000 family have several vulnerabilities which Win98 doesn't have.

NeilCFD

 

[Anonymous]

Neil

Although WIn XP etc. have security issues that 98 doesn't, the reverse is also true and users of all Windows products should keep up to date with security patches. However, win 95 is no longer supported and i am not sure if win 98 is. Microsoft publish their product support lifetimes somewhere on their website.

As far as program updates go, I have an interesting story to tell.

Microsoft reacts to 'issues' in a knee-jerk fashion as soon as they become aware. Good?
NO!!
What we the user get is a patch that has not been fully tested or debugged and later patches often patch-the-previous-patches.
One should always wait for the serce packs rather than taking each individual download. Service packs contain a collection of 'fixed' patches and all have been tested properly over time rather than knee-jerk fixes. However, with security patches it is probably safest to patch rather than wait (not always though as some security patches have opened new doors)

 

[Neil]

Hi Tony,

Although WIn XP etc. have security issues that 98 doesn't, the reverse is also true

I couldn't agree more - I hope it didn't come across that I was trying to point out the virtues of Win98 as I don't think there are any! I never considered using PCs until NT3.5 came out, and since then I've always used the NT family - as far as I am concerned, Win95/98/ME shouldn't be used for serious work, and nowadays even home users should consign them to the dustbin where they belong.

I take your point about waiting for service packs, but I think if Steve doesn't apply at least a couple of the more critical patches, he'll last about 3 minutes online before being infected if my experiences are anything to go by. In terms of other hotfixes, the standard advice is to leave well alone unless you are directly affected by the problem.

NeilCFD

 

[Steve Maskery]

You are right about the 3 minutes! The moment I reconnected my broadband connection I started to get popups about some Spyware stuff, every few minutes. I now have a pop-up stopper which catches them, but I never had this problem before.

My McAfee says everything is tickety-boo.

Apart from the SpyBot thing, I'm very pleased.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Noel]

Steve,

Although your pop up problem has been sorted Dewy suggested this sometime ago and it works:

"Popups are the scourge of the internet made worst since advertising revenue plummeted 90% in 6 months between 1999 & 2000.
Windows XP came with 'Messenger' not to be confused with MSN messenger. This was no problem at 1st but as more advertisers pay for 'Messenger' popups they have become a nightmare for XP users.

There is the cure for Messenger popups within XP. Open the Control Panel from the Start menu. In Category mode click on Performance then Maintenance. Click on Administrative Tools then double click Services. Scroll down the right hand list & double click the Messenger entry. Click the Stop button & select Disable from the Startup menu. Click OK to apply. You should no longer be bothered with these popups "

Rgds

Noel

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you Noel/Dewey, excellent.
I take it the same thing is true of 2000, as a friend of mine has exactly the same problem (and is currently using the pop-up stopper solution, too).

Even happier chappie now!
Cheers
Steve