[ale] OT: winxp upgrade version from scratch?

[James P. Kinney III]

<begin soapbox rant mode>

Wipe the drive, repartition, slap on a RedHat 8 (no distro wars, please)
for him and show how easy it is to do things and hit the Internet. Show
him how much he can get for the money and time investment. Show _your_
Linux box uptime report. Preach to him about subversive nature of the
controls and "bug fixes" that Microsoft uses.

Convert that person and show them the ALE list. Tell them to save their
money by NOT giving it to Bill. Have him give it to you instead to setup
and teach him how to use the new found freedom of an computer system
that puts the box owner IN CHARGE instead of the corporate interests in
Redmond.

Show him how wonderful it is to be able not have to have an extra $70 a
year just to keep from getting email viruses. Show him the elegant
simplicity and excellent functionality of OpenOffice.org installed WITH
the operating system, not a separate purchase and installation headache.

Convert, convert, convert.

<end soapbox rant mode>

On Mon, 2003-01-06 at 02:31, David S. Jackson wrote:
> Thanks Jim and Greg!
> 
> On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 12:25:10AM -0500 Greg <runman at telocity.com> wrote:
> > In the past (Win 2k pro upgrade), you boot off of the upgrade disk and it
> > will ask you for the old (in my case Win 98) disk if it did not detect the
> > old system. So... boot up with XP and insert a Win 98 disk when it asks for
> > it.  
> 
> I guess since we have the XP here, I'll try installing with it and see
> if it will install on a bare machine.  I'd like to take the system down
> to bare metal on the HD, just because his system is so slow and full of
> little inexplicable problems...
> 
> > What kind of Win 98 errors are you getting ?? I just fixed my Win 98  -
> > it would not boot either, it having vxd errors.  However it was a dual boot
> > so I just used the other system.  
> 
> For example, his IE suddenly refuses to fire up; it crashes within the
> first few seconds and pops up a stick up to prompt you to send a bug
> report in to M$.  You pretty much need the browser to configure his new
> dsl router...unless there's a telnet interface, like there is on
> mine...have to check that out.
> 
> There were other persistent problems, like "ndetect" saying it must
> terminate now.  The Win98fe add/remove programs would hang indefinitely,
> and trying to use the task manager would lock up the entire system.  I
> tried to reinstall IE, but that process couldn't seem to complete
> successfully.  I tried to reinstall the entire OS on top of itself
> (win98fe still), but that process couldn't seem to progress beyond the
> second stage before hanging.  It's a four year old installation, so it
> seems to me to be behaving like Windows does after four years on the
> same installation.  
> 
> He originally asked me to come over to help him set up his DSL, but he
> had bigger problems.  I hate it when that happens!  :-)  
> 
> > You know, you could use another system to
> > "operate" on the hosed disk if you don't want to reinstall.
> 
> Well, at this point, I just want to get *any* system working for him.
> When you show up at a friends house expecting a simple router and
> network config but discover a basket full of gremlins lurking in his
> Windows installation instead, it tends to scale your expecatations back.
> He's gotta wonder if there's something wrong with you, not just with the
> machine.  I want to get his Windows stuff working, then I can see about
> getting a Linux install on there too.  I think the "Fast Access DSL"
> installation program clobbered a lot of files when he did something that
> made it terminate prematurely before I got there.
-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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