[pmistry]

I don't know why this pisses me off, but I think Microsoft is arrogant and ignorant for dropping Win95 from the upgrade path to Windows XP. Windows 95 still has a huge install base, and a lot of small businesses still use it. Many of those PCs still have decent Pentium II processors and 128 to 256 megs of RAM. Plus Windows 95B and Windows 95C both are essentially Win98. Also I am pissed that they dropped NT4 from the upgrade path, NT4 is in the same boat as Windows 95. I just think Microsoft is just plain annoying when they do things like this, forcing people to buy a full copy of WinXP over an upgrade release. In my opinion Windows ME's sole purpose is to generate more money. Windows 2000 should have been WinXP in the first place. Windows 98 was just Win95 with all the bug fixes, etc. WinXP is the OS we've all been waiting for and have wanted for since Windows 95!

[Seldzar]

Ever thought that it might just not be possible due to changes to the os or limitations of win95? Or better yet that the best possible upgrade scenerio leaves the user with a incredibly flaky and unstable setup?

Win95 is 6 years old, that is an eternity.

Win98 is only half that and presents a much more refined codebase for them to upgrade from.

I'm sure there's an official reason posted somewhere.

[pmistry]

I still think MS could have made it possible, seeing how Windows 2000 will upgrade it. Windows 95 was the codebase for all of the OSes from 95A to 95B to 95C to 98 to 98SE to ME. It is still possible plus NT4 is easily done to Windows 2000, why not XP?

[EddiE314]

who cares??? who still uses 95? if your comp still uses 95 then chances are that it doesn't meet minimum system requirments for XP anyway, BTW, didn't you know M$ is a Monopoly? there's nothing else i can say that Seldzar hasn't already said, think about it man, he's right.

[Dragon-Lord]

Eddie may be brusque, but he has a point. All the systems that I have seen that shipped with Win95 are not suitable for WinXP. However, if you are lucky, and want to upgrade, just borrow someone's copy of the Win98 upgrade CD (like a zillion people you know) and upgrade to 98...just before you upgrade to WinXP.

Just make sure you actually buy your WinXP upgrade. It is most decidely worth it.

:}

[AndyFair]

Not only that, but while Win2k does have an upgrade path for Win95, any upgrade made from the consumer Windows editions (95, 98 & ME) seems to be about as stable as a not very stable thing.

AndyF

[Bursar]

But if you're doing an upgrade, why on earth are you installing it over the top of your existing setup?

No wonder it's flaky. Have the setup program format your disks and start from scratch. You'll have a much quicker and stable machine.

[AndyFair]

That's what I'm saying - Microsoft should put warnings on the upgrade version of the XP box: "Danger, this operating system could seriously screw up your system"

You would have thought that since XP is also a consumer upgrade that they would have spent some time improving the upgrade path...

AndyF

[Seldzar]

**oops messed up my edit**

[Seldzar]

They have improved and are improving the upgrade path they just removed legacy junk and streamlined the codebase more.

How much code do you think it takes to keep win95 and nt4 in the upgrade path? Probably a sh1tload more than without it. Also being that they want it to work well and be fast and smooth so cleanup the code and get rid of the 6 year old crap.

Just face it, win95/nt4 is ancient in terms of code and support. I'm suprised someone isn't crying about how they can't upgrade from win3.1, geeez.

Also on the point of nt4(even 95), most corporations running NT4 on their desktops are in now way gonna "upgrade" all the workstations so that they have possibly hundreds of flaky machines. They will do what well managed IT departments do, create a baseline image and reimage the pc's 1 at a time until they are all upgraded and freshly installed. Of course they will do extensive testing beforehand to ensure all their software works with it. The same would be true for any win95 os's in a corporation.

So as you can see it would be a large waste of code , time and effort to make those available in the upgrade when it's completely pointless and the amount of people who will actually upgrade from those platforms is VERY small vs the amount who will do clean installs.

This is just an excuse for more people to b|tch and cry and not pay for the full os.

So you look at it this way, keep the upgrade for the very small amount of people who will upgrade their win95 os and then whine cause it's flaky. Or remove all that extra code, streamline the setup and upgrade, save lots of devel time and money, and make it better for everyone else?

This also avoids ms being flooded with support calls for the brilliant people who upgraded win95 to winxp and it's puking on them which in turn costs more money.

You tell me which one you would pick if you were the project manager?

[imtim83]

Hi everyone i am on win2k pro right now and wondering if its worth going to Windows XP. So far what i heard and seen its ok. But not really that much worth it. Even thou my hardware is enough
with my duron 800mhz , 256 mb of ram maybe 512 mb of ram would be better for windows xp i think cause i am hearing its a ram hog.
and i seen people say it can use 80 to 100 MB on bootup windows xp but maybe i am wrong. i know the fast user switching each user you have you should add 64 mb of ram to or something like that. I guess maybe with luna effect off it doesnt take as much ram. I really dont need that fast user switching anyway. And dont need the system restore , or cd burning software , etc

Because i have that already but maybe that built in stuff is better than i think it is. Please tell me.
And also tell me about the ram and processor is best for it.
Windows xp home or windows xp pro. both really

My thinking is i dont even got to go to windows xp because windows xp will help get support on more hardware, software , games , drivers, etc for win2k also because we use windows me software , games , hardware, drivers , etc on win98 or win95. or we use win98 software , games , hardware, drivers , etc on windows 95.
i dont see why we cant use windows xp hardware, software , games , drivers, etc for win2k. What do yall think ?

Maybe i should try the $10 thing from MS which i can download it or pay $20 and have download access and a cd.
But the two thing i hate about windows xp is the product activation and ram use. But i guess they arent a problem. i just want to know what happens when someone upgrades their mobo and processor. But no one has yet on windows xp i dont think.

Any help appreicated
Thanks

[AndyFair]

Quote:

Also on the point of nt4(even 95), most corporations running NT4 on their desktops are in now way gonna "upgrade" all the workstations so that they have possibly hundreds of flaky machines. They will do what well managed IT departments do, create a baseline image and reimage the pc's 1 at a time until they are all upgraded and freshly installed. Of course they will do extensive testing beforehand to ensure all their software works with it. The same would be true for any win95 os's in a corporation.[/B]

That's all well and good if you happen to be working in a company with a large IT department that can do that kind of thing (and I'm one of those people..)

But you also have to remember that XP is also being released as a consumer edition too...and while I would assume that most people on this board are competent, IT-aware people, who understand that the best way to install any operating system is to do a clean install, the majority of people upgrading to the XP Personal Edition will not be as technically competent as we are - which will inevitably cause problems, with flaky installations all over the place. And these people will not be able to understand why their PC (which worked fine under 9x) keeps crashing every 5 minutes.

I just think that it is incredibly short-sighted of Microsoft not to provide a decent upgrade path for older versions of Windows to the Personal Edition.

But if you try to upgrade PCs in a work environment rather than do a clean install (or copy a clean image) - then you deserve to be booted out onto the streets!


Just my opinion (for what it's worth)
AndyF

[ThC 129]

Quote:

Hi everyone i am on win2k pro right now and wondering if its worth going to Windows XP. So far what i heard and seen its ok. But not really that much worth it. Even thou my hardware is enough....

My old PIII500 with 256 ran XP very well not as nice as my new system does but it still ran well on the old system. As for using XP drivers on 2k, some you probably will such as display drivers and other items like that, but others won't be able to be used. As for product activation, well if you don't like it crack it. That is not illegal because you bought the CD so you can do what you want with it, kinda like game no-cd cracks. Plus you aren't limited in the amount of activations you get, yes you can only get 5 activations over the net, but if you do over 5 MAJOR upgrades in that time (major meaning processor and motherboard, and a HD) then you will have to call a 3rd party clearing house for activation. MS does not run the activation process directly, and the only info being sent is stuff like HD serial #s and other things. Much is still unclear on the whole activation thing but its not like you have to give your name SS# DOB 1st born child and things like that to MS.


My best advice to you is to try the preview program or the 'unofficial' preview program (ya know that one w-word) and see if you like it and if not go back to 2k or 9x or win3.11 or linux or whatever else ya want. You never know about anything until you take that 1st step and try it.

[imtim83]

why in the world wont you beable to use the other drivers , software , games , hardware, etc of windows xp on win2k ?
why only graphic drivers?


thanks

[BladeRunner]

Drivers have followed a 'standard format' since the release of Windows98.
That is why if no Win2k drivers existed for a device you were more likely to find the Win98 drivers would work over the NT4 ones.
Of course the Win98 drivers were not HAL aware so this did cause problems, but were more likely to work than WinNT's.

As for activation, well as the last post says do what you want.
Crack your copy, download a pirate version, it's totally your call really, but expect any future SP's or major updates to break the installation you have if it's not legit, so again it's totally your call.
Under Beta2 I made the following hardware changes:

PIII 800 CPU out, PIII 933 CPU in.
1x 128MB RAM out, 2x 256MB RAM in.
ATI XPert graphics out, Matrox G450 Graphics in.
Additional 45GB IBM HD
Additional HP CD-RW

Beta2 did not request me to re-activate the OS and it's still running very happily on my domain at work now as I speak.
As usual the likes of 'The Inquirer' & 'ZD-Net' are full of rubbish & BS, statements like 'Replace your mouse & you'll have to re-activate your OS'

The simple matters are as follows:
More than 5 re-installations and you wont be able to re-activate over the net.
That's 5 upgrades more advanced than the upgrades I listed above.
XP will function for 30 days without activation, so if you really do need to re-install an OS more than 5 times (In which case I really have to question not only your use of XP, but PC's in general) then you're never going to have an installation for more than 30 days - you'll never ever activate it.

[pmistry]

First let me clear up some misunderstandings, I use Windows 2000 Pro on an Athlon Box. I don't use Win95, and I haven't used it since 1998. All I am saying is that there are some businesses that still run NT4 on Celerons, Pentium II and III's since many of these businesses have decided to skip 2000, even on MS's site those companies are encouraged that they should skip 2000 now and wait for XP. But they will have to install a new release instead of upgrade copies, etc. When they realize the cost of moving NT4 to XP, they may decide to move to 2000 instead but then later may need to go to XP. More money being thrown around.

As for Win95, sure maybe a lot of people don't use it much anymore, but Windows 98 and Millennium are built from it, I can understand that Win95 or Win95a upgrades are not possible since they are ancient OSes, but what about 95B or 95C, those OSes have USB and AGP support [granted it is patched in 95 B] and many people with P2 or P3 CPUS may still be using Win95, many of them probably decided not to buy [Or borrow and burn]a useless copy of Win98 or WinME, realizing that it is the same thing as Win95, which they are. Just load IE on top of 95 and bang you have 98. Even MS didn't release Windows Media Player 7 for Win95 or NT4, but all the other OSes seemed fine. I really would like to know why Win95 is so drastically different compared to 98 or ME. As for a Win95 user wanting to update to XP, what is wrong with that? Some people don't need NT.....yeah everyone gloats about how great 2000 is, but some people / families use a computer for just surfing the net or using MS Office, I would assume with Microsoft's advertising, that it will most definitely be geared towards families, and with that many families may wish to get XP. Not all people are tech savvy like us and many of them wouldn't even have thought of borrowing 98 to update 95 first.

So EddiE314 I don't understand why you were so brash about it when I brought it up, I just think MS is very tactful in how they plan their upgrades, and since XP is built from NT, 98 and ME upgrades are gonna suck just like it was under 2k, and most people don't have the smarts to format and start fresh like we can. But who knows? Maybe when XP comes out, it upgrade 95 even if it doesn't say so on the box?

[IMarshal]

NT4 will upgrade to XP. However, none of the Workstation/Pro SKUs will upgrade to the XP Home edition.

Win95 is indeed unsupported for upgrades, probably because Win95 is soon to be unsupported in general. I guess that if you're still running Win95, Microsoft would recommend that you buy a new PC.

[rgodart]

Man, i can't upgrade my windows 1.0 to winxp either then?????!!!!!

My point is (for those who didn't get it): MS just can't support an OS forever.

[Brian Frank]

True.
On the flipside, I hope they don't drop Win2k so soon as well as ME ( we all know that need's all the support they can put out).
Yeah, 6 years is ancient history in electronics, and Win95 is not on the cutting edge of technology. 98 added some very nice things to it in the way of support of some very important technologies like USB.
95 has enough things lacking from 98 that it should be dumped in favor of moving on. Yes, this sucks, but 95 has been dropped by some manufacturers products.
If Windows NT is any indication, Win2k should have a nice life left in the way of support. Of course, that could change--depending on how much MS gets flamed over some less than satisfying "features" of XP (Product Craptivation anyone?)

[rtm242]

So you're pissed they dropped support for NT4 upgrades, yet NT4 upgrades ARE INDEED SUPPORTED (as of RC1)! LOL

Too many corps want to upgrade from NT4 for them to drop support...

The reason Win95 upgrades were dropped has nothing to do with MS being nice or not, it has to do with how much testing can a single company do in <x> amount of time even with massive amounts of testers?

Would you rather they support:
Win95, Win95a, Win95b, Win95c, Win98, Win98se, WinME, WinNT351, WinNT4, Win2K upgrades.

Or would you rather they support:
Win98, Win98se, WinME, WinNT4, Win2K upgrades.

And spend more time testing these OSes, thus ensuring a higher quality product?

Don't forget that their #1 test effort probably has to revolve around clean installs, and OEM preloads (thus ensuring brand-new computers work well with the OS)

One last thing is that I seem to recall reading that no OEM ships Win95 any longer, and MS no longer provides technical support for Win95... so that is an even better reason to drop support.

The king is dead, long live the king.
-R