Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (05/02)
Adventures with Windows XP
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.As I mentioned a short while back, I decided to build a new computer and set it up with Windows XP. It has been a very interesting project. My first step was to download Microsoft's "Upgrade Advisor" software. I ran this on my Win98 computer to see if any software/hardware that I wanted to transfer might pose a problem. The report stated that I might have problems with my scanner, digital camera, network adapter, inkjet printer and my USB 2.0 adapter. Not a very good start. Then it listed my software that it said would not support XP. These included Caere Scan Manager, Corel Office 2000, modem settings and Partition Magic 5.0, Drive Image 3.0 and 4.0, and Easy CD Creator 5. Note that there was no mention of Microsoft Office 97, just Corel Office 2000. So, I had to do some checking on the Web to see what I could update and what I needed to replace. It was very interesting that the results were quite mixed. Some manufacturers had XP drivers/updates for my hardware/software. However, some did not. More about that later.
My new computer hardware is nothing spectacular, but is in the mainstream of what is available today. I used an Intel P4 processor (1.7 GHz) with an ASUS P4 motherboard and 512MB of RDRAM, that guaranteed that any bottleneck would not occur in this area. And, there should be enough RAM to successfully run the professional version of Windows XP. I added an NVidia GeForce 2 video card with 32MB of video RAM, a 40GB Seagate UDMA 100 hard drive and a Plextor CD-RW. I transferred my Adaptec SCSI card, my ZIP IDE drive and my USB 2.0 adapter from my old computer to the new one.
The next step was to install Windows XP on this system. Since the software did not come with a floppy disk, or instructions, my guess was that it booted from the CD. That is what it did and that was my first mistake with this system. The XP setup program identified the floppy drive, the CD drive, the burner and the ZIP drive and assigned drive letters to them. Then it told me I had an unconfigured large drive and asked if I wanted to set it up and install Windows. Since that was what I had in mind, I said yes. The installation of XP Pro took less than 30 minutes. However, when it was finished. I found that the ZIP drive was the C drive, the CD-ROM was the D drive, the burner was F and the boot drive was E. That was not what I considered a normal configuration. So I had to study the help files on drive letter assignment. What I learned was that with XP you can change the drive letters for any drive to any letter you like, EXCEPT for the boot drive. Unless I wished to start all over again, I was stuck with the E drive being my boot drive. I decided it was easier for me to re-learn drive letters than to go through the installation process again. So far, XP seems to be quite happy with this drive letter setup. I did have to change the ZIP drive letter assignment. Before I did, I found that new software wanted to install on the C drive, not the E drive. So now I don't have a C drive and software installs without problems on the E drive.
After determining that Microtek did not have an upgrade for the scanner software, I took the easy way out and purchased a new scanner. Since I had a USB 2.0 adapter, I opted for a scanner that required a USB 2.0 interface instead of version 1.1. The data transfer rate of 480 Mbps for the new scanner creates a preview in about 10 seconds. A full-page scan of text doesn't take much longer. Even color photos scan very rapidly. However, I did have to download a new driver to use the scanner with Windows XP. The download and the installation went very smoothly. The extra expense of purchasing the scanner was well worthwhile considering the time saving that has resulted. I scanned a complete magazine page with pictures for an OCR test and it took about 20 seconds. That's much faster than my previous scanner.
As for the other hardware, I had no trouble finding XP drivers for the camera, my new printer, network adapter and the USB 2.0 adapter. My older printer did not have an XP driver available and the manufacturer indicated they did not intend to produce one.
The new drivers did install smoothly and all are working normally. So the hardware installation was not as much of a problem as I had originally expected. It was just that there was considerable time involved in finding, downloading and installing the updates. Plus, I had to purchase a new printer and a new scanner to work with XP.
The next part was to transfer software from the old system to the new system. XP comes with a files and settings transfer wizard. It has to be run first on the new machine where it creates a floppy disk that can be run on the old machine. The biggest problem with this system is how to get the files from one computer to the other. The next biggest problem is what files does it transfer. It does not transfer any programs, just data files. Well, I had over 2 Gigabytes of data that it wanted to transfer over a serial cable between the two machines. Since I didn't agree with the programs' selection of files, I cancelled that transfer.
I'm still working on transferring some of my files from one computer to the other. I did manage to copy my Outlook Express addresses and messages. For that I used a ZIP disk. For the applications that I wanted to transfer, I had to do new installations using the original CDs. In some cases, I had downloaded upgrades and sometimes that required that I install the older version first before installing the upgrade. In other cases all I had to do was put the older CD in the drive and let the installation program identify it. I also had to find all the serial numbers for the various applications to get them to install correctly. I'm still in the process of getting the software installed and files transferred. However, this process does give me the opportunity to really decide if I need all the old software that had accumulated on my computer.
Just as a side note, I did try Iomega's "Ready to Move" software, which is supposed to use your ZIP drive to transfer files to your new XP computer. However, it insisted I didn't have any ZIP drives. Why it wouldn't recognize my internal ZIP drive, I really don't know. Anyway, that was a waste of time.
Since I am using Windows XP Professional instead of the Home edition, I set up the Administrator account and a User account. That has also been an interesting learning experience. Some software can only be installed and run under the Administrator account. Generally, I prefer to run all my software under the User account, but because of the way some of the software is designed I can't do that. So I end up switching from one account to another as I go through my day. At least I have managed to control all my email and Internet activity in the User account.
One of Microsoft's selling points for Windows XP has been that a "rogue" program won't crash your whole system. Instead, the program can be shut down and you can continue using your computer without having to reboot it. So far, my system has crashed three times. In each instance it was a conflict within either the Control Panel or Windows Explorer. And, I had to reboot the system every time. XP does have a report form that can be sent to Microsoft when these problems occur. Yes, I did send it off. It's interesting that the problems haven't occurred in any of my third-party software. I've also noticed that XP does boot much faster than any previous version of Windows.
My last comment for this installment has to do with the benefits gained by going to Windows XP. So far I haven't found any! Considering the time, effort and money expended for this upgrade process, my books record a loss. As time passes, maybe I'll change my mind. But at this point, I can't see XP as a cost-effective upgrade. If you buy a new system with software already installed, that's a totally different story.
*Dr. Lewis is a former University and Medical School professor. He has more than 20 years of experience working with personal computer hardware and software. He can be reached via e-mail at brian_klewis@hotmail.com or voice mail at 941-925-3047. :
Copyright 2002. This article is from the May 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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