** Need Help: Prepping for MAJOR OVERHAUL **

[agoodfella]

Hi folks,

First post, and I'm glad I found this board before my major "surgery". Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me.

My laptop: A21p
Specs: PIII (Intel step up 950) / 512mb RAM / Win98SE

First, my hard drive has crashed and is on its last legs.

I am doing two major procedures:

1) Installing a new hard drive (a 80mb drive)
and
2) Upgrading O/S from OEM provided 98SE to XP


QUESTIONS RELATED TO HARD DRIVE UPGRADE:
__________________________________________

A) What things should I be aware of before installing my new hard drive?

B) All I need is the boot disc and recovery CD correct?

C) My understanding is that I just slide the hard drive out, unscrew the old one, replace it with the new one and then, slide it back in... I was told that a menu screen in DOS pops up to walk me through the rest... am i missing anything?

D) Also, if I plan on partitioning my hard drive, should I do it at this point OR after I have successfully installed the recovery programs?

QUESTIONS RELATED TO XP UPGRADE:
_________________________________

A) Is there any reason to think that my laptop would be better off not upgrading to XP? Will there be significant performance issues?

B) If there are new BIOS updates for my laptop (A21p) for XP, should I be downloading and installing these XP BIOS updates before OR after I have installed XP?

C) Is it advisable to do a fully "CLEAN" installation? i.e. should I bypass the recovery section and just try and load XP totally from scratch onto my new harddrive? If so, will there be driver / compatibility issues that I will be running into down the road?

Anything else that I need to know about or consider?

As you can tell, I am far from being a tech savvy guy...

Thanks all

[jdhurst]

I don't have any experience with that machine, but based on whatever experience I do have:

1. Make sure you update the BIOS before you put in a new hard drive. It should work.
2. That machine may have APM / ACPI problems with XP. That was a problem with a few ThinkPads that came with Windows 98, would run Windows 2000 just fine, but not run XP very well. You can disable power management, and that just means turning the machine off when you put it away.
3. Before you start, make sure you have a network driver. I recall working on an A20m, and the only place to get an initial working network driver was from the Windows 98 recovery CD. You need to work on the internet to get the drivers you need, so have a working network driver is critical.
4. I would do a clean install. Search Microsoft downloads for the program that makes XP boot diskettes. There is a package for SP0, for SP1, and probably for SP2. It makes about 6 diskettes. It is at this step (loading XP fresh) that you will need a network driver on a diskette.

Good luck, ... JD Hurst

[agoodfella]

Thanks for your reply.

I have a few additional questions to your suggestions:

1) Downloading a network driver... do you happen to know specifically which file (or link) I need?

2) Once I download this, I assume I should save it to a diskette and then install it AFTER(?) I have loaded up XP on my laptop... I'm kind of confused as to when I need to install this exactly, and also how to install it...

3) As to problems with XP, is this purely a power management problem (in which case I just need to shut down my laptop everytime I stop using it for an extended period) - this is not a problem since I rarely if ever use it outside my home... however, are there any other issues I need to be aware of?

4) The "CLEAN" install... I assume you are recommending that I completely bypass the loading up of the OEM Win98SE onto my new harddrive... in which case, I hope that I don't run into any other driver problems when installing XP... I was wondering if you could post a link to download those XP boot diskettes... It's not that I am lazy, I just want to make sure I don't download the wrong ones - the XP version I have is Windows XP Pro - SP2

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.

Any others with any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

[jdhurst]

1. No idea - you will have to find your model and then the driver.
2. Once you have it, you need it on diskette if it will fit (at least the .inf file). Picture this: New hard drive unformatted (no data). Start XP install, XP CD is in the drive. It wants the network driver (because it will not likely have one for that machine). At that point, you need the driver on diskette.
3. XP (in my experience) can't work with old power management computers (crashes, blue screens, etc.) so power management must be disabled.
4. I am definitely recommending bypassing the Windows 98 OEM install. Windows 98 was one of the most defective products Microsoft ever made. Installing XP over top of 98 is begging for problems. YMMV, but my experience supports my statement.
... JD Hurst

[fredstev]

1. No idea - you will have to find your model and then the driver.
2. Once you have it, you need it on diskette if it will fit (at least the .inf file). Picture this: New hard drive unformatted (no data). Start XP install, XP CD is in the drive. It wants the network driver (because it will not likely have one for that machine). At that point, you need the driver on diskette.
3. XP (in my experience) can't work with old power management computers (crashes, blue screens, etc.) so power management must be disabled.
4. I am definitely recommending bypassing the Windows 98 OEM install. Windows 98 was one of the most defective products Microsoft ever made. Installing XP over top of 98 is begging for problems. YMMV, but my experience supports my statement.
... JD Hurst

I've stumbled thru this procedure a couple of times, once on a TP T20. In my case, Windows got the network driver off of the Win XP Home disk that I was using to do a clean install over Win 98 SE. The only other help I can contribute here is that when you do a "clean install" instead of an "upgrade", XP will ask at some point during the install for you to "insert Win 98 disk now". It wants to read the COA number on it. I managed to type in the COA number on the bottom of the Thinkpad and that made it happy. BTW, I tried this routine again on an older Dell using all legally registered software, and there was no making it happy - I had to call MS for a verification number.

Good luck

[LtTPfan]

You can find the A21p drivers here. You might want to download every thing that might possibly be needed, read the installation notes and readme files, and burn everything to a CD.

But, it would be easier if you just installed XP. (You might want to d/l your network driver first and have it ready just in case but XP SP2 is pretty well loaded with drivers that will get you going.) Once XP is installed and you're connected to the internet you can download the SOFTWARE INSTALLER and let it do all the work for you.

I'm not sure what you'd need XP boot diskettes for as your XP CD is bootable.

I recently bought a T30 without an operating system, and did fresh XP install. It was a piece-o-cake.

[jdhurst]

I have done some A series installs (not that one) and Windows XP / Windows 2000 did not have network drivers for it. That is why we in this thread suggested downloading the drivers first. The T30, on the other, seem to be fine with Windows XP CD install. The later the ThinkPad, the more likely XP will have the drivers. I am going here from personal experience only. ... JD Hurst

[agoodfella]

Hey guys,

I just got off a long haul flight and was surprised and grateful to see so many responses.

This is exactly what I needed.

one more DUMB question:

the Software Installer I assume will have BIOS updates on them, though my A21p is currently running the OEM98, once I have installed the XP, I am assuming I need to run Software Installer once more to get it "updated" for XP?

I will update everyone on my progress *fingers crossed*

Thanks again

[LtTPfan]

The software installer can download and install the BIOS update but you probably want to do that before upgrading.