Is it better to upgrade WIndows 98 or do a clean installation?

Hello. I've read all of the questions regarding an upgrade from Windows 98 to XP, but none of them seemed to quite fit my situation.

I recently purchased a new Western Digital 80.0 GB hard drive, since my old 13.7 gig was full. I also bought a new ATA 100 controller card, etc. Since this new drive will be so much faster than my other one, I wanted to reload the 98 operating system onto it, and then upgrade to XP. There are very few files I want to save from my old HD, all of which I've backed up onto CD (Word documents mainly). As I've read the questions on this site, your representatives keep reminding everyone that an upgrade over an in-place OS always causes problems, due to settings being carried over.

What kind of problems, if any, would I be looking at if I did a complete clean install of Windows 98 from scratch on the newly formatted drive, and then installed the XP upgrade from there. This way, there would be no previous setting carried over, no programs to conflict, etc. Am I safe here, or am I still better off buying the full version? I'm a poor college student, so this is more of a matter of getting the most for the money I am able to spend.

Thanks so much in advance!

This question was answered on February 3, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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If you are upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP, I advise that you perform a clean install of the new operating system, rather than an upgrade install By performing a clean install, instead of an upgrade install, you will insure that various Windows version-specific printer drivers, browser plug-ins, COM modules, configuration files, and registry entries - of which the Windows XP upgrade installer has no knowledge - are appropriately modified

To correctly perform a clean install, we advise the following steps:

-Back up all data prior to migrating to Windows XP (assuming your data is stored on the same disk partition as the operating system)

-Perform a clean install of Windows XP

-Perform a complete reinstallation of all Adobe drivers, fonts, and applications

-Restore data as necessary

-Note that installation of applications on a partition other than the one used by Windows 98 does not remove the need to reinstall such software after installing Windows XP

While it is not recommended , if you wish to perform an upgrade install from Windows 98 to Windows XP, you should first uninstall any Adobe drivers, fonts, and applications prior to performing the upgrade Once your system has been successfully upgraded to Windows XP, you can reinstall your Adobe drivers, fonts, and applications

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Posted by Ileen of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on February 3, 2003

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