upgrading win 98 -> XP fat32->NTFS

L400ras

Hello people,

as title says, colleague has win 98 (still) and wants to upgrade - ie not lose all her current data. i understand if i just put in win xp pro disc and select upgrade this will be ok, all data will be moved to a windows98OLD folder or (similar) but was wonderinng about the fat32 to ntfs conversion. should this be done on installing xp, or will the conversion wipe user data

cheers

superscaper

The conversion will wipe all the data, it will basically be formatting the disc. In the long run your colleague is much better off installing from scratch and backing up their data first. Presumably they should have backups of their data anyway. Simply upgrading over 98 can be messy, certainly in terms of computer performance afterwards.

crox

I'm fairly sure that after you install xp you can run Convert from a command prompt that should maintain your data

Thought I edited last night to add a link to microsoft, but if you google convert.exe ntfs there should be a link to it. I ran it years ago when I moved to win 2000 and didn't have an issue.

Omertron

superscaper wrote: »

The conversion will wipe all the data, it will basically be formatting the disc. In the long run your colleague is much better off installing from scratch and backing up their data first. Presumably they should have backups of their data anyway. Simply upgrading over 98 can be messy, certainly in terms of computer performance afterwards.

The first part is not true. You can go into a DOS window once you have booted XP (Start->Run->"CMD") and type the following command:

convert C: /FS:NTFS /X

Assuming that C: is the drive you want to convert. Make sure you run a defrag afterwards as this process will HEAVILY fragment the drive. It may also take some time depending on the speed of your PC.

As to the second part, I agree totally. Reformat and install is the best option all round