Bill in Co wrote:
wrote:
Thanks to all who replied about my question about whether or not to
reinstall XP. However, no one answered the question about the upgrade
to Sp3. Since I have dialup internet, I cant upgrade online. I got the
SP3 upgrade file from a WIFI site and saved the 300+ meg .exe file to my
laptop. I got it from microsoft.com. But it did not specify if it's
for XP Pro, or XP Home. Is it for BOTH?
I thought somebody already answered that, and said it was the same for both.
One other thing, can I just copy this to a USB flash drive and run it,
or do I need to burn to a CD? I'd prefer the flash drive.
If I were you, I'd do neither. I'd copy it to the hard drive of the
computer you want to install it on, and run it *there* on the local hard
drive.
Also, why not simply clone the existing drive (as a backup option), and then
try it out firsthand, since that way you'd have nothing to lose and will
find out for a fact if you're "good to go", rather than rely on some
opinions. And in the event it doesn't work, you can simply put back your
old drive.
Agree on the backup idea.
If you only have the one computer, you need a "Plan B" if
something goes wrong.
I did a transition on a system once, took some hardware apart,
and had just the one computer on hand. And ran into problems.
I had to get out the screwdriver and undo all my work again,
to be able to recover and make forward progress. I learned
a lesson from that, about expecting trouble, and having
an easy means to start over again.
If you have just the one computer, are attempting an OS
re-installation, you should have some means of "going back"
if you run into a problem. In my current situation, with
quite a few spare hard drives sitting in a pile, it's just
easier to start with a blank one, do a test install to that,
then, if things are broken, install the original drive in
the machine and do whatever needs doing on the Internet.
Then try again later with the blank drive, until I
get it working.
And in terms of "worst case" bad luck, I've managed to
break two computers while working on them, requiring a
third computer to do some Google searches for solutions.
In Casey's case, the problem is the dialup connection,
and the limitations that presents for tool choices. For
example, getting a copy of Macrium Reflect Free, is over
100MB of download. And that means a trip to the Wifi site.
And if Casey happened to know something of Linux, and making
a Linux LiveCD for various computer repair issues, that can
be 800MB of download. There are things out there that are
free, but the download is still a nuisance factor.
Without a large cache of "tools" downloaded for the job, the
next best thing might be a separate drive to install the
new OS on. Once the OS is working half decent, then connect
up the other drive and transfer some stuff over.
Paul