Replace win98 with xp

[richie m]

Whilst having a tidy up i came across the girlfriends old Compaq Armada M300 notebook. I managed to find out it had 193 MB of RAM and a 5 gig hard drive before it crashed!  We could still make use of it but would like to have XP on it is this possible? Is it possible to upgrade it, if that's required? It would probably only be used for Word or Excel documents, so a huge memory isn't required. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[SuperDave]

I would say the first thing to do is to find out why it crashed and try to get it running again. If you're only going to run Word or Xcel, Win98 is perfect for that.

[richie m]

I'm a bit of a computer dunce! If i put the latest versions of Word and Excel on there will they be compatible with WIN 98?

When it crashed i got the message :- " A fatal exception 06 occured at 0000:00000017."  It crashed when i tried to reset the time and date!

[ChrisXPPro]

Sounds like the old machine could be a bit unstable if time/date change crashed it!  Could have been a 'bad luck' crash of course.

98 should run Office 2000 but wouldn't push it to go to any later versions.

Other main thing tho - that RAM is way too small to run XP - you'd be relying all time on a paging file and it'd be slow - plus 5Gb is hardly gonna leave you much spare space as XP ''grows'' fast on a system drive - and you'd be hard pressed to allow also for a large paging file and enough spare space to defrag etc - let along have enough space still left for progs and data.

IMO XP wants min of 250 Mb RAM and functional minimum for reasonable results should be 1Gb.

Patch up the 98 best you can and go with it as is.  Even try a reinstall of 98 possibly.

[Broni]

Do you have ANY Windows CD?
With 193MB of RAM, you can try Windows 2000 at the most.

[richie m]

Only discs i have are XP i'm afraid. Everything seems fine till i try and set the date. Weird! I don't mind spending a few pounds on it but it would have to be a few! lol The girlfiend likes it cause it's small and cute! No jokes thanks! 

[ChrisXPPro]

Ok - no jokes!! 

Pounds huh - so in UK. 

Anyways I'd think with some digging and even ebay - you could well find a disk for 98 - reformat and start over perhaps.  I still have a copy (somewhere) of 95 OSR2c ... and that ran pretty well way back when!

Run a few diagnostics and see if you can spot any glitches that might be correctable ..... worth a try.

[patio]

Without adding more RAM i'm afraid Broni is right....

[drmsucks]

Only discs i have are XP i'm afraid.

Worth a try - doesn't work now!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

[Broni]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

They posted it on April, 1st, didn't you notice?

[drmsucks]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

They posted it on April, 1st, didn't you notice?

64MB is MORE than enough!

[Broni]

Uhm....for a calculator...

[drmsucks]

Uhm....for a calculator...

April fool's!

[Broni]

Where the heck have you been a whole weekend? Playing golf with patio?

[Broni]

BTW, you're getting close to a bar. 130 more posts.

[drmsucks]

BTW, you're getting close to a bar. 130 more posts.

Bars are not good for me!

[Broni]

Bars are good for everyone...

[drmsucks]

Where the heck have you been a whole weekend? Playing golf with patio?

Thanks for noticing. 

My wife was in a Relay Walk to raise money for cancer research - from 10AM Friday to 9AM Saturday; walking all night; 104F on Friday and 100+ Saturday. I had to go to help set things up, take pictures and ended up staying; took my ASUS Eee and stole a signal from the high school where the event was held - but the connection was slow so I quit mucking around on the internet.

She raised almost $1600!

[Broni]

WOW!! That's nice

[drmsucks]

Thanks - she worked hard!

Okay, Richie M, thanks for the space - back to you!