The short answer is "from your backup." If you don't have a current backup of your hard drive, make one now. We recommend PowerQuest's Drive Image or Symantec Norton Ghost, both of which can clone your hard drive(s) to another drive or to one or more CD-R discs. Backing up to CD-R (this, of course, requires a CD writer) is a particularly cost-effective way of safeguarding your data.
If a computer running Windows 98 or Windows Me is upgraded to Windows XP, it should preserve all the existing messages, email addresses, programs and desktop configuration settings. However, if a "clean installation" or "dual boot" configuration is set up, it will not. In any event, it's always a good idea to have a current backup.
Another good choice for PC hard drive backups is Ahead's Nero. Version 6 greatly expands upon the backup capabilities of v5.x.
2) Another of the most common complaints we hear after an XP upgrade is "my
This is a major upgrade for Windows 9x users and there are bound to be some software or hardware components in your collection that will require upgrading. We recommend running the Windows XP Upgrade Advisor. This tool is on the XP program disc, available on a free "Eval Kit" CD from many retailers, or available as a free 34MB download from Microsoft. If you can't find it, a similar compatibility checker is at http://www.pcpitstop.com/. You might also want to check the compatibility listings at http://www.ntcompatible.com/ and Microsoft's own Windows XP HCL Hardware Compatibility List.
3) Unmountable boot volume. This error can occur during some Windows XP installations. Unfortunately, it can lead to a situation where you can't boot Windows XP, nor can you easily uninstall Windows XP and revert to your old operating system (e.g., Windows 98 or Me, etc.). Some people find that updating the BIOS fixes this problem; others find that disabling Ultra DMA, but leaving PIO enabled solves the issue (but slows down the system's disk performance substantially). Still others see problems after trying all of the above, as well as more Draconian (and usually ineffectual) fixes such as reformatting, replacing the master boot record (MBR), running the XP "fixboot" utility, etc., etc.
As it turns out, Microsoft calls the problem a feature "by design" and claims the purpose of this behavior is to prevent potential data loss due to the usage of an incorrect IDE cable for the faster UDMA modes.
This behavior may occur if the following conditions exist:
· You are using an Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) controller with your computer.
· You are using a standard 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.
· The basic input/output system (BIOS) is set to force the faster UDMA modes.
To resolve this behavior, Microsoft recommends replacing the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable,-or-Try loading the 'Fail-Safe' BIOS default and reactivate the most currently used options such as USB Support.
After wading through a vast number of reports, it seems this problem happens most frequently when using AMI BIOSes and VIA chipsets (the latter has been on our "evil hardware" list for most of the last two years). VIA chipsets are well known to suffer from a number of shortcomings, not the least of which is a dependence on the so-called "4 in 1" drivers to enable high performance drive access. It appears these drivers may be an issue here, too.
In general, the best way to install these drivers is to download the newest version (using a different computer if your primary PC is incapacitated) from the VIA website, then install them as noted below and reboot. If this is not possible, you'll find older versions of the VIA 4-in-1 drivers on your motherboard CD.
3 To install 4-in-1 driversa) Extract and Save the drivers on a floppy diskette. b) Near the start of the Windows XP installation routine, the system prompts you to Press F6 to install other drivers. Press F6, then insert the floppy to install the drivers. Windows XP, like Windows 2000, recognizes the drivers as SCSI -- this is normal. With any luck, your installation should then proceed without a hitch.
Our long-term suggestion is to avoid VIA as the maker of your next motherboard's chipset.
See also: http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/1346.html
4) Unavailable CDRW in WinXP? some users have noticed that CD writing functions of their burner may seem to be mysteriously absent, even though the drive is listed as supported at www.microsoft.com/hcl . The fix, according to a post by "Timble" at NeoWin, is as follows:
Go to Start>Run> type "Regedit" and click "OK". Now click on the + signs for each of the paths as listed below and then follow the branch to the next one. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CD Burning\Drives Then click on the yellow folder icon for "Volume{0c092dc0-c259-11d5-bfe4-806d6172696f}". If you have more than one drive, there may be more than one Volume (and the code may vary). You need to somehow work out which one is the CD-RW, and choose the appropriate one. Or guess - I doubt the effects would be serious if you got the wrong one except the other drive may not work till you correct it. In the right hand window will be an item called "Drive Type" Right click this and change the Dword value from 3 to 2 Click "OK" and exit registry editor. Restart and that should give you the options for burning. At this point my CD-R and CD-RW discs were still not being recognized, but uninstalling the CD burning update (Q309691) solved this. If you have the CD burning update (from Windows Update), go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs, and find it near the bottom of the list. It's called "Windows XP Hotfix (SP1) [See Q309691 for more information]". Remove it, restarting if necessary. If you don't have the fix, try downloading it from Windows Update.
5) XP freezing part way through the installation? Try removing all cards except your video card and start the installation again. If that still doesn't work, try upgrading your BIOS.
6) XP can't open documents you used to be able to open? We've received reports from WordPerfect owners that, after upgrading to Windows XP, their copy of Word can no longer open WPD files. Instead, a dialog appears saying that Windows cannot open these files. The help system then suggests visiting a web site to find out what the extensions are.
We have verified that this behavior is "normal" for Windows XP, however, it is easy to change. Word for Windows, as you know (but the Microsoft guy apparently does not!), does open WordPerfect files (versions 5 and 6.x) . You can open Word and, using the File > Open command, select the file you want to open. To permanently set Word to open this file type, you can right-click a WPD document, choose Properties, then click "Change" and choose Word as the program with which to open all WPD documents. Select "Always use..." and click OK to make this selection permanent.
No comments:
Post a Comment