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W2K CLEAN INSTALL vs UPGRADE

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by jr0410

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We have Win98 on most of our new workstations. We also use a Foxpro DOS database. Ever since upgrading from Win95 and slower machines, our database crashes and freezes. Foxpro and Windows error messages appear. The Windows error messages mention "illegal operations" and "executing invalid instructions". The Foxpro messages are particular to that particular program. We decided to "upgrade" a few machines to W2K Pro to try to solve the crashing and freezing problems since W2K is supposed to handle memory issues better that its predecessors. We have found that "upgrading" to W2K does not solve the problems. However, a clean install of W2K does!! Is there anyone out there that knows why? If so, is there anyway to do an "upgrade" install and then tweak it to stop crashing?

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by thechas

2 BIG problems with OS upgrades vs. fresh installs.

1. You still have ALL of the garbage that was in the old registry. This includes a large number of bad and useless keys.
This is the single biggest reason for performing clean re-installs of Windows 9X every couple of years. The registry just gets to big and cumbersome to deal with.

2. You will have a number of unneeded, and just plain wrong DLL files. At a minimum, many applications install and use different versions of DLL files for different versions of Windows.

There is no "simple" answer to tweaking an OS upgrade.
You need to identify the bad registry keys and DLL files, and get rid of them prior to installing the new version of the OS.

You can make the clean install a bit easier by wiping the OS files instead of the entire drive.
I clean out;
The root folder of the boot drive;
The Windows folder;
and the "System" sub-folders under the windows folder.

You still need to re-install the applications, but many of your user settings for the applications are intact.

Chas

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