I recently purchased Win2k pro , and upgraded my Windows 98. The installaion was flawless, and pretty much everything I had installed ran. There were a few quirks that were obvious, and some showed their ugly head a few weeks later.

I noticed a few days after the initial installation that I had no "Suspend" which told me that I had no ACPI, when in fact I knew hardware wise, I was ACPI compliant.

So I decided to reinstall, and force an ACPI installation. No problem.. I now had suspend working and everything else. A few days pass, and I decide to play an online multiplayer game. It was more like seeing a slideshow. Everything was moving at a crawl. It was playing great before ACPI, so I started searching, and found that ACPI forced almost all my devices on 1 IRQ. Sound card, NIC card, Video Card, USB hub and something else I cant remember, which were all being used pretty heavily when playing an online game.


So... Off I go to MS Website, which someone else mentioned is a mess, it is, and found that WIN2k does indeed put several things on 1 IRQ. They say there should not be any problems. "Should not" of course is the key phrase.

Unhappy I decide to go back to a regular APM install. No can do. It reinstalls seemingly fine but now, the reinstallation is detecting I have an ACPI computer, so It doesnt install APM or ACPI for that matter. Oh oh! No shutdown anymore! After 6, yes 6 hours on the phone with MS tech (2 Phone calls of 3 hours each), and many failed attempts they figure the best thing to do is format and reinstall.( Gee wihiz, why didnt I think of that!) So I did and now I have APM back. What a pain in the... I hate reinstalling everything.

Although it wasnt the solution I was looking for, I have to give credit to MS for really trying to help out. You would not believe the things we tried. I just feel sory for the guys on hold...

I decided this time to do a dual boot, so I go out and buy a Hard drive just for Win2k. They can be had for cheap nowadays, 150.00 for 15 gigs, and I got Adobe Photoshop LE ($99 dollar value) for free. 7200rpm...Sweet!


WOW! All I can say is anybody that is using Win2k upgraded from Win 98,you havent seen Win2k at its best. Its fast...fast...fast! Excellent reliability, which I have to mention, very rarely did Win98 crash on me, yes, I know Im in the minority but its true. Gone are all the quirks.

The build number doesnt remain on my desktop anymore, it did before no matter if I turned it on or off with TweakUI.

Win2k has a startup sound... didnt when I upgraded from win98.


Boots up in half the time, I would get a long pause right before the desktop cameup which I believe was win2k detecting devices and initializing them.

Shutdown works EVERYTIME now. Before, it would hang at shutdown.

These are just a few minor things, I could make a long list, but my message is long as it is.


My final thoughts are, MS should be commended for giving us the option to upgrade Win 98 to Win2k, but if you really want to have a nice setup, do a clean install. I can state that enough. The difference in speed is night and day. I wish that ACPI wouldnt do what it does to my IRQs. Not that I actually use ACPI, but some things you just want, just for the sake of showing off your suspend button (hehe). No its not important, and because of the drastic drop in performance, I do not have an ACPI HAL installed.

My other wish is up to everyone else not MS, which Im sure will come in time.. Drivers, Drivers and more drivers...

Microsoft, this is your best OS yet! Bravo!


Thanks for listening....

Johnny

ps. Forgot to mention, After using the 2k interface, its very hard to go back to win 98. So much cleaner, sharper, neater and just well thought out. Anyone else think so?




[This message has been edited by JohnnyB (edited 27 March 2000).]

Hi there

I totally agree with everything you said.
Good story, almost start crying.
beatiful !!

w2k rulezzz. and i agree, it's very very hard to go back to win98 after you worked with w2k.

Its been my experience to never trust an upgrade install. Even though most of the time win2k does a good job ( feel sorry what happened to you man. That really sucks. ) I still feel like there could something wrong with the registry or something which might make it slower. Clean install I trust.