OT: Operating System Upgrade

[Fyron]

Meh, just find a crack to disable that. XP doesn't really _need_ to phone home. This is one of the reasons why XP is such a bad piece of software...

[El_Phil]

Well I had an ME partition, plugged in a new hard disk stuck XP on that and it just dual booted like a dream. Of course I then had a string of unconnected hardware problems that buggered the entire system, but that is the joy of owning a PC.

Still, like a beaten wife, I still come back and don't get a new machien, thinking that this time it has changed and will work properly.

[TurinTurambar]

Also, if you are installing XP on a new drive or somesuch, make sure to create a 6 GB partition for just XP and the paging file. Install all programs on a second partition. Then, move critical settings folders such as My Documents and Program Files onto the data partition with TweakUI (available on microsoft.com under XP power toys, or some other random locations for the pre-XP version of TweakUI). Export a nice, clean version of the registry after installing your programs to use in the future. This way, when windows decides it is time to implode, you can just format the windows partition and reinstall, losing no real data. In fact, you can do this as a preventive measure every 4 to 6 months to keep it running smoothly.

Uh, sorry, but that's just a tad bit over my head. Not a lot, but a tad. But thanks Fyron, I'll give it a go and teach myself.

Further OT: Does anyone know of an upper echelon graphics card that does dualhead? My Matrox G550 is great, but is starting to hang on some stuff.

[Kamog]

Hi, I too am using Windows ME and I'm also considering upgrading to XP at some point.

Question: What is the difference between XP Home Edition and XP Professional Edition? From what I hear, I have this vague impression that Home Edition isn't very good and Professional Edition is the way to go. But I don't know specifically why Professional is better. What does Professional have that Home Edition does not? The computer is used at home with only one person using it, and it will mainly be for games, internet, and word processing. Is XP Professional worth buying?

[Fyron]

If you can find XP Pro for a small amount more than XP Home, I'd suggest you get Pro. But if all you can find is a $100 difference, XP Home will suffice. Here are some sites that compare the two:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...p_home_pro.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/h...choosing2.mspx

Turin:

The paging file is what windows calls its virtual memory file. It resides on the drive partion where windows is installed by default, so you do not need to worry about it.

TweakUI for XP is available on the http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...]XP Power Toys. In one of the tabs there is an option to change the location of system folders. This is handy for being able to not have to lose your documents, pictures, and installed programs when you need to reformat windows partition and reinstall it. You would want to copy folders such as Program Files to the data partition, then use TweakUI to change the location to the data partition, reboot, and delete the orginal Program Files folder on the windows drive.

Go to run command (windows key + r, or in start menu) and type in regedit. This opens the registry editor, which you can use to export a copy of your registry to a file, and later import your registry from a file. This is useful to do after a clean install of windows and the programs and games you usually use. When you need to reformat and reinstall windows, you can just import this archived registry and have most of your system back up to par in no time (when combined with moving critical files to the data partition).