Re: regretting upgrade from ME to XP Home
- From: "glee" <glee29@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 11:56:59 -0400
OK, now I am a little cornfused.
If you plan to go back to WinME, you really don't need to add more RAM. WinME will work fine with 128MB RAM....you do need to either clean off space on the hard drive or get a bigger one, regardless.
You would need to add more RAM if you want to stay with XP.
With the amount of used space on the hard drive, it seems to me you ought to be able to gain a lot of space by moving some of your data to CD or DVD. Do you have any idea what is taking up all that space? It is certainly not programs or Windows system files. I suspect it may be pictures, music files, documents and the like....many of which can be archived to optical discs or an external hard drive, or a second internal hard drive for storage.
I suggest getting either the freeware Scanner or the freeware DiskUsage for Windows to see how your disk usage breaks down:
http://aumha.org/freeware/freeware.php#scanner
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
"Melodie" <Melodie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:76CD3C82-C42E-478A-9CE2-405FFE3BC7D3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks, Ken. Your information is very helpful! (I posted a response
yesterday, but it hasn’t show up, so I must have done something wrong.) I
checked Add/Remove Programs. No luck there. So if I understand correctly, I
can backup my files and reinstall ME from CD, in order to get my machine
running again. (I’m really sick of hauling this heavy laptop back and forth
from work!) That will give me some time to buy and install the new HD and
RAM. Any suggestions on where I can look for specific instructions about how
to do this? Are there limitations on how much upgrading is possible with a
given machine?
Thanks so much!
Melodie
"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:
On Sat, 26 May 2007 12:46:04 -0700, Melodie
<Melodie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>A couple of months ago I decided to upgrade because I was worried about
>security issues if I continued to use ME. Wish I hadn't done it. I checked
>the system requirements for this upgrade and thought I was OK, but evidently
>not. My hard drive is way too full.
And you have nowhere near enough RAM.
> In My Computer it says my C: drive
>total size is 37.2 GB and free space is 2.72 GB. I've removed a bunch of old
>email and docs, but it didn't help much. Ran Disk Cleanup. Disk is too full
>to run Defrag. I think I even removed some of my virus and spyware software,
>just trying to clear enough space to defrag.
You might want to consider buying a second hard drive and moving a lot
of files to it. Your present drive is *very* small these days.
> (Don't worry, the machine isn't
>vulnerable. I'm using my work laptop at present and don't plan to get on the
>internet again with my home machine until I can get this resolved.) I've
>been reading, and reading, and reading in these discussion groups.....and now
>I'm too scared to do anything else to it! At this point, if its still
>possible, I think I'd rather just go back to ME.
As a general rule, you can't uninstall an operating system. You have
to reformat the drive and install another operating system cleanly.
There's an exception to that, however. If you did an upgrade from
Windows 98 or Me, and took the option to save the previous operating
system and also did not convert your drive to NTFS, then you can find
an entry in Add/Remove Programs. Clicking on that will uninstall
Windows XP and revert to the previous operating system.
If there's no entry in Add/Remove Programs, then one or more of those
conditions wasn't met, and your only choice is to reformat and install
whatever operating system you want cleanly.
>I have the reinstallation
>CD that came with my computer, but I'm afraid I deleted ME files that I
>shouldn't have.
If you use the reinstallation CD, you'll be starting over, so what
files you deleted from the hard drive shouldn't be pertinent.
> (I think I remember being asked about deleting ME files at
>some point. Everything worked fine for weeks, so I may have done that. Sorry,
>this was a while back and I just can't remember exactly.) My guess is that
>I'd need a costly upgrade to make XP feasible.
Depending on what type of RAM your computer uses, you should be able
to buy another stick of 128MB (for a total of 256MB) for under $50US.
And you can buy a 60-80HD for not much more than $50.
If I were in your shoes, I'd spend the $100 or so to upgrade those two
components, and you should be all right.
>It might make better sense to
>just buy a new machine.....but I really don't feel comfortable spending the $
>right now (possible layoff looming). So...if I can go back to ME, that may
>be best.
>
>My system specs:
>Dell Intel Pentium 4 CPU 1.60 GHz,
That's fine.
>128 MB RAM
Nowhere near enough. How much memory you need for decent performance
is not a one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the
amount of RAM you have keeps you from using the page file, and that
depends on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range of
business applications find that somewhere around 256-384MB works well,
others need 512MB. Almost anyone will see poor performance with less
than 256MB. Some people, particularly those doing things like editing
large photographic images, can see a performance boost by adding even
more than 512MB--sometimes much more.
>floppy disk drive and CDROM
>
>As you can probably tell, I know just enough to get myself in trouble, which
>is exactly what I've done! I'd appreciate advice from the experts here, but
>please "dummy it down" for me, or I won't get it! Thanks so much!
>
>Melodie
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
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