Ready to Upgrade Your Windows Operating System?

For those who haven't heard, Microsoft will no longer support Windows 98 or 98 SE. They will not release any updates or patches and you may already be experiencing problems with Internet Explorer 6. If you are like me, you have hundred of games, multimedia programs, utilities, devices and more that are compatible with Windows 98 but may not be compatible with another operating system (OS). Once you update your operating system, you must update your device drivers including your video, audio, cd drive, scanner, printer, and digital camera. That means you better know what is in your computer. So go find your manuals or check your computer system information.

If you ever installed an upgrade of any software over another, you know this could lead to problems. I recommend you make a drive image that you can revert to if things go crazy. If you have another drive or a large enough drive to partition into two or more "drives", make your primary drive the one that has the new operating system and a secondary drive for your Windows 98 operating system. Remember not to connect to the Internet with the Windows 98 OS, because you may be vulnerable to upcoming problems. So set up a dual boot where you can boot up in the new OS for the Internet and Windows 98 for your software and devices that are not supported by the new OS.

Now, do you want to upgrade to Windows 2000 which is stable and can support networking? Or do you want to upgrade to Windows XP which actually has a Windows 98 simulator that "should" support your software and devices? This debate has been ongoing at my home office, because of the local area network (LAN) that shares the Internet, files and printer with the other computers in our network. We installed Windows 2000 on an 80 gig hard drive that required us to set up in NTFS format instead of FAT 32, because the hard drive was too big. Since the format was different, we could not set up dual booting AND share files between the two partitions. The hard drive later failed and we got a replacement on which we plan to install Windows XP Pro instead if we can network the computers successfully and have all software and devices working.

You may be wondering why I haven't upgraded sooner. Well, I just have too much software and files on the hard drive and when I get another hard drive, I can just make a drive image of my main drive to the new drive and everything is the same. I don't have to get out every disk for every program, all items, shortcuts, favorites and more are the same. All files are duplicated and life is simple. Well, now I have to clean a drive, install the OS, install updated drivers, install software starting with antivirus software, test everything to see if it functions and spend a lot of time in the process. Then I need to reconfigure the network! This is not my idea of fun, but Microsoft gives us little choice and I have too many files associated with Microsoft software to swith to the Linux OS. So, like it or not, we must upgrade or stay offline. Since I am a web designer, I guess I must upgrade.

Yvette Kuhns, Power Pages Web Design, March 25, 2003

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