Guide to Installing Windows2000 Conti.....

Upgrade or Not?

I will tell you that it is always… let me repeat
that, ALWAYS best to fresh install any operating system and upgrading from a
previous operating system such as Windows3.1 to Windows95…  or Windows95 to
Windows98 is always a bad idea. It can be done, but it adds a layer of problems
if it goes successfully, worse case…  your system is trashed and you find
yourself formatting only to install fresh. 

Why would you consider upgrading Windows95
or Windows98 with Windows 2000?
There are only two
possible situations that come to mind:

1. 
   

   You have a great number of software applications
   installed on your system and fear reinstalling them all; and,

   
   
2. 
   

   You have lots of user accounts and settings that
   are going to be difficult to reconfigure in a fresh
   install.

The best thing to do...   is to do
everything in your power not to upgrade an existing installation. It only takes
one bad experience with an upgrade of Windows95 or Windows98 for you to realize
that a crashed operating system is a horror. You can believe that it will not
happen to you, you can handle the problems that arise or somehow you are
protected by the Gods of Software… then you are living in a dream world. A
complete operating system melt down is no fun and recovery can be a
nightmare.

The best possible way to install Win2000 on a
Windows 95/98 system is to create a parallel install. This means placing Win2000
and Windows 95/98 in separate directories or separate hard drives or drive
partitions. This isn't hard to do and is spelled out later in the installation
instructions: all you need to do is specify a different directory than the
existing one for Windows. But be advised, you must have at least 850 megs of
free space on the target drive to do this and I recommend at least a gig
free.

For best results with parallel installs, use
another drive. One reason for this is that Windows places components in the
Program Files folder of the system drive that may not be cross compatible with
other Windows versions. If you have Win95/98 on the 'C' drive and space on the
'D' drive, install Win2000 on the 'D' drive. This way you'll have two discrete
Program Files directories, one on C: for Win95/98 and one on D: for
Win2000.  No possible confusion there. Trust me, putting Windows versions
in their own partitions is the most reliable way to work with a multiple-boot
environment.

Upgrade Issues: FAT
SYSTEMS 
If you're installing Win2000 on
a Windows95/98 system, you need to think about the file-system issue... 
even if you're upgrading Win95/98. Win2000 works transparently with FAT (also
known as FAT16) and FAT32, which makes it possible for Win2000 to coexist on the
same drive as a Win9x installation, without any major problems.

Even so, no version of FAT should be left on the
system if you want take advantage of NTFS security features, and any Win2000
installation on a FAT or FAT32 partition will be far more vulnerable to casual
attacks (all someone has to do is put in a Windows boot floppy to get into the
system!) than if the system were on NTFS drives.

Okay...  most of you who will read this are
loading Windows200 either at home or your home office, so this is not a
concern.  But, we thought to mention it.

So, if you're looking for the best mix of
interoperability and security, use FAT32 as a happy medium between the Operating
Systems. You can use a FAT32 drive as a data repository while you upgrade your
Operating System and application drive(s), then convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS
using the Win2000 command line command:

CONVERT {drive letter}: /FS:NTFS

Down the road, though, think about moving any data
you need to migrate between Operating Systems completely offline...  say,
to a local-network shared drive or a backup device/drive.  Then convert all
drives to NTFS and restore your data back onto your local system.

Why would you consider leaving FAT or
FAT32?
One big reason comes to mind...  not all of your existing
applications will run from a NTFS drive, many are older and designed to run on
FAT or FAT32.  Converting over may completely make these programs unable to
run.  So, consider hard before converting all your drives to
NTFS.