Potential XP troubles?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Scott
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Jim Scott

I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
 
Jim said:
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I
suppose I will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are
there any known no-nos?
Click to expand...


Basically:
- anything that wants direct acces to Hardware of low level system stuff
- 16 bits applications - som will others won't run
- Any dos based apps (especialy if crated with turbo pascall 7 or under, or
borland C++ of the same periods.
- older (pre 2000) assembly programs can get into a fight
- Anything that is not designed for 2000 or XP and Cannot run on NT4

Most of the time you will find XP either:
- refuse to run the program (though the process might still be active -
check your task manager
- Give a fatal exception error on the specific program - Close the app and
send (ornot) the report to BillyBoy

Chances you wil ruin your XP installation are (fortunatly) slimm, unless you
allow to overwrite stuff. But even then you can try to restore items with
the system repair function. (Right Click My Computer >> Properties >> tab
"System repair") Personally, I find It as usefull as Clippy or the My
Pictures folder, and turned it off.

Very general tips, indeed, but they might be usefull non-the-less

MigthyKitten
 
am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
--
Jim


Jim
One caveat...re-install them all after installing XP...that way you'll know
for sure if they work in XP.
Two caveat...try to install only the latest version wherever possible.

That's the way I did it and it worked out real good...no programs left
behind. Yeah, I know, it's time consuming but...!

And by the way, are you planning to install XP over an existing Win98se?
Many no-nos in that plan so check out some of the XP install advice sites.

http://www.winxpfix.com/

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/index.htm

http://is-it-true.org/nt/xp/index.shtml

http://www.dougknox.com/

among others that might be suggested.

nocando
 
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
Click to expand...

I can't think of a single program I can't run on XP that I could run on 9X.
I know there must be one that I can't think of.

OTOH, I can think of quite a few programs that can run on XP but not 9X.

Enjoy the stability!

Bob

Remove "kins" to reply by e-mail.
 
Bob said:
I can't think of a single program I can't run on XP that I could run on 9X.
I know there must be one that I can't think of.
Click to expand...

CPU Load and AtGuard are immediate thoughts.
 
Jim said:
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
Click to expand...

Can you not install XP on a seperate partition in order to test the
bahaviour?
I hate XP and even when it is running properly it is slow and
inefficient compared to 98SE.
I've run XP on three machines of differing spec and the way of getting
it to run properly is to tweak it to perform as closely to 98 as
possible.
'Cept you have no DOS for backup in case of emergency :-(
System Restore is a ghastly, resource hungry, problematic no no...
Make sure you have a vast amount of RAM. Good luck.
 
Jim said:
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I
suppose I will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are
there any known no-nos?
Click to expand...

Run the Windows Upgrade Advisor, which is included on the CD (The CD is
a bootable one, if your system allows for that). You can also download
the Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft, it's around 50M, I think-
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

It probably won't catch everything, but it does help. I had been using
"1st Impression" to change Windows' logon and logoff graphics, but that
program doesn't work on XP. I had some trouble with Kerio 2.x but I just
went up to v4 and it's been find.
 
Jim said:
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
--
Jim
---------------------------------------------------
Tyneside - North East of England
To email me directly omit the X from my address
Visit http://freespace.virgin.net/mr.jimscott
---------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...

On a friend's XP computer, I found that Popcorn 1.48 would freeze. Of
course, it runs fine on my W98SE.

Mike Sa
 
Run the Windows Upgrade Advisor, which is included on the CD (The CD is
a bootable one, if your system allows for that). You can also download
the Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft, it's around 50M, I think-
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

It probably won't catch everything, but it does help. I had been using
"1st Impression" to change Windows' logon and logoff graphics, but that
program doesn't work on XP. I had some trouble with Kerio 2.x but I just
went up to v4 and it's been find.
Click to expand...
Nice call Ben. Even if the updater doesn't know if the program will run
on XP, it will tell you that it doesn't know!!

Three possibilities that it reports.
1) yes
2) no
3) doesn't know

Can't be any clearer. :-)

Regards

Watcher
 
Can you not install XP on a seperate partition in order to test the
bahaviour?
I hate XP and even when it is running properly it is slow and
inefficient compared to 98SE.
Click to expand...

I LOVE XP. It can run quite nearly as fast as 98SE, too--besides smoother
and with infinitely more stability.
I've run XP on three machines of differing spec and the way of getting
it to run properly is to tweak it to perform as closely to 98 as
possible.
Click to expand...

You mean "faster," not properly. Besides turning off the eye candy, you
also need to turn off non-essential services. Check blackviper's site
(sorry, no URL at the moment) for free .reg files to do 95% of that for
you. You can also use XPlite (I think one version is freeware) to get rid
of bloat. Finally you can switch to a sleek, much better looking, 3/4 less
bloated, really *neat* shell like the free blackbox (bb4win or bblean)
(requires a small learning curve, but you can run bb on top of explorer
until you want to make the switch). If you wanna go payware, I highly
recommend Aston. Great free styles and themes for both!

XP rocks! No doubt about it!
'Cept you have no DOS for backup in case of emergency :-(
Click to expand...

Oh, how very poor and backwards we are that we still have to depend on that
little DOS disk! Makes me sad, really, to think I was once in that
situation.

Hey. Use free PEBuilder to build yerself a REAL boot CD on steroids (a
mini-XP environment) with all kinds of utilities, including file managers,
a disk imager, xxcopy, nic drivers, even a 'net browser, anything you want.
Reads and writes NTSF with ease, too. A DOS prompt is just PITIFUL compared
to that, pal!

Schedule ERUNT to run every couple days or as needed to do a complete
registry backup, which can even be restored from XP (requires a reboot of
course).

And don't forget about Recovery Console, which needs no extra disk. There's
your prompt ;).
System Restore is a ghastly, resource hungry, problematic no no...
Make sure you have a vast amount of RAM. Good luck.
Click to expand...

Who needs System Restore? Turn that shit off, and hibernation, too. Use
ERUNT and a disk imager and xxcopy on a schedule.

Nah, you don't need a vast amount of RAM at all. You got at least 128k
already, right? With any OS, more is better, however.

And just go ahead and install right over Win98 if you don't want to take
the time to reinstall your old programs. (If not, choose NTFS for the file
system on the clean install.) If a program can't even run in compatibility
mode, remove it: you didn't really need that obsolete old thing anyway,
it's time to finally let go, packrat. Then use a reg cleaner to clean out
any stuff that's now useless, and go thru the Device Manager and remove
hidden devices. (Backup w/ ERUNT first, tho'.) Then use the reg optimizer
that comes w/ ERUNT. You're set to rock!

By the way NTFS is FAR better than FAT32. You can say goodbye to all that
scandisk nonsense and lost files and clusters after a crash (and crashes
are gonna be rare now anyway, assuming you update all your drivers)! You
can convert to NTFS from FAT32 after installation, but first do the cluster
alignment: see http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm.

Yeah, XP all the way! (Until the vendors all support Linux ;) )
 
I am moving to XP from 98se at the weekend
I use a number of freeware programs acquired over the years. I suppose I
will have to try them in turn to see if they work, but are there any
known no-nos?
Click to expand...

I have two systems networked together. One is Win 98se older system,
and Win XP newer system. I only install the latest versions of
Freeware that are supposed to work with Win XP. The rest I leave with
the Win 98 system. Since you are probably only using one system, then
what I would do is this. after installing XP I would use a program to
monitor all my installations. Such as Total Uninstaller. This way if
any freeware program doesn't work correctly, you can always uninstall
it.

I find that mostly every freeware program I have on Win 98 also works
well in Win XP. Plus Win XP is a much more stable OS as long as you
don't install a lot of junk on it. Also like someone suggested go to
that Black Viper website to see what you can turn off in Win XP so it
runs even smoother. Also keep track of all installations, and I also
clean the registry fairly often.

If you don't already have a backup system you should really invest the
extra money into one. For under $200 I bought a 160 GB western digital
external hard drive, for back up purposes. Once I had Win XP setup the
way I wanted before I installed a lot of software. I backed up an
image of it to the external hard drive. This way I have a clean copy
of Win XP, if I ever need to start over again. I also back up a ghost
image of the the Win XP computer weekly. This way if something goes
wrong I will be able to restore a fairly recent image of my programs.
It's well worth the money to protect yourself, and your data in case
of a disaster, or hard drive failure... Good Luck with your system.

Cheers
 
Henry said:
Why take a backward step ???????????
Click to expand...
Your issues will last MUCH longer than the weekend.....

SOS

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