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Old May 6th 04, 12:51 PM
Mike M
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Default Windows 2000 Professional/Windows ME

Windows 2000 Professional is an entirely different operating system than Win
Me. Which do you have? Win Me can be upgraded to either XP Home or XP Pro.
I'm not sure about Windows 2000 Pro and suspect that it can only be upgraded
to XP Pro.

If you install XP as an upgrade you should lose none of your installed
programs although one or two will need to be uninstalled first and then
reinstalled and others will need to be upgraded. The upgrade advisor will
provide all of this information (see below) but you should have no problem in
using MS Office once upgraded although some tweaking may be required if it is
Office 97,

Some users will tell you that you should clean install XP but that isn't
really necessary, especially where you wish to retain your existing installed
applications since upgrading from Win Me to XP is in effect a clean install of
the operating system as, unlike an upgrade from say 98SE to Win Me, you are
upgrading the underlying system from one using the 9x kernel to one using the
NT kernel.

The XP Upgrade Advisor (UpgAdv.exe) can be downloaded from
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/h...ng/advisor.asp but
note that this is a large program being around 32MB is size. If you only have
a dial-up connection it might be worth looking for a magazine that has
included the Upgrade Advisor on their cover CD. The advisor will give you a
clue as to any XP drivers required that aren't on the XP CD and programs for
which you will have to obtain updates. Some applications will have to be
uninstalled prior to upgrading after which they can often be reinstalled
although in some cases the application will first have to be upgraded to an XP
compatible version. The Upgrade Advisor is also included on the XP CD.

For a more extensive discussion of upgrading see Gary Woodruff's article at
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpupgrad.htm
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



FFG wrote:

I presently have Windows 2000 Professional, Windows ME.
I would like to up date to Home XP but need to know if
this will hinder my use of Access, Excell, Powerpoint and
Word? Will I lose these features?