Win XP 'Upgrade' - stick it (warning: mild rant)

[rberry88]

Okay, I just need to get this off my chest once and for all. I bought my Gateway desktop PC 1 1/2 years ago, its a 1.1 GHZ AMD that came with Windows ME. After about 6 months of using ME I upgraded to Win XP Home with the upgrade version of the software. Now for the last 10 months everything has worked flawlessly until about 6 weeks ago. I bought two new Hard drives (80 GB Seagate ATA 100). I used the included software from Seagate to transfer all my files, settings and the OS over to the new drive. Ever since I did this, windows now freezes during boot up and it takes at least 2-3 hard restarts before it finally boots up. I spent countless hours on the phone with Gateway tech support (hey, I paid for it) and they had me reformat, rebuild, recover etc, you name it they had me do it (good thing I had made a ghost copy of my original hard drive before doing any of this). Well after spending the last month and a half with an unstable at best computer I was at my wits end and starting to curse anything and everything PC related.

Solution I wiped out (formated and wiped clean) one of my new 80 GB Hard drives and used the Recovery disks from Gateway to install Windows ME clean on the new hard drive and then I upgraded the new install with Windows XP Home Upgrade and it worked flawlessly. I put it through every stress test I could think of and it performed great just like it did prior to changing hard drives.

I guess the lesson I learned is: when all else fails, go back to the beginning and start over. I did go out and purchase a full copy of Win XP PRO (not upgrade) and installed it as a clean install over the weekend and it has worked perfectly (as perfect as Windows can run) for the last 4 days. 0X

rberry88

[Janak Parekh]

Yes, I've not bothered to do one XP upgrade -- all my machines were installed fresh. There's always clutter otherwise.

BTW, and this might have saved you some trouble: you can do a fresh install with an XP upgrade CD: you just have to insert the Me or other CD during the XP install as proof-of-purchase; apart from that, it acts the exact same as a full version.

--janak

[Steven Cedrone]

When you received the PC from Gateway, did they include the ME install disk seperate from their recovery disks? AFAIK, you can put the XP Update disk into a computer (freshly formatted) and it will ask you for the CD from another version of wondows (no need to install the other version first)...

Steve

Update: Darn it Janak! You did it to me again...

[rberry88]

No, Gateway does not give you the OS install disc separate from their branded Recovery discs. The recovery discs contain the OS but there is no way to install just the OS from these discs (I asked 4 different support people about this). Evidently they want your computer to always be burdened with their additional software like Gateway Ink Monitor, HelpSpot (support FAQ) and a few other useless tools. They even offered to sell me the original OS install disc for $49.99 USD :twisted: . When I used the Win XP disc in re-install the Win XP home upgrade it acknowledged that it found a previous version of Windows (ME) and let me re-install it with no problems but until I re-installed Windows ME first, then and only then my problems were taken care of. I'm just happy that I now have the full version of XP PRO in case something happens in the future, I won't have to worry about dealing with that Gateway software crud again.

rberry88 :mrgreen:

[Steven Cedrone]

Not to totally beat this into the ground, but if you had a Windows 98 disk, it would have worked as well...

Steve