Win2000 Professional - Upgrade or full ???

First, it would help us a little to know what the current state of your hard drive is...partitions, files systems, location of data, etc.  This can help us determine whether you will need to back up your data to a secondary source.

Option 3 is the best of the three choices IF you don't have a lot of older games you like to play.  Quite a few older games have some difficulties in Win2000.  If you do a lot of gaming, I would recommend having a decent sized primary partition formated in FAT32...say 3GB...and setup a dual-boot by first installing Win98SE (C:\windows) and then installing Win2000 (C:\winnt).  W2K will automatically create a boot menu so you can choose between the two.

Obviously, this may mean re-fdisking your hard drive, which means you'll have to backup your data to a secondary source.  If you're not too concerned about gaming, I'd stick with a clean install of Win2000.  Make SURE before you do it that you have the most recent drivers for all your hardware.  Although 2000 has support for most of the recent hardware, you never know what it might be missing.  I would still recommend a partition larger than 2GB for your system/boot partition since the standard install of 2000 on my machine was about 650MB.  Add Office2000 and a few more apps and you're already at 1GB.

Definitely Option 3.

My recommendation is to combine options 1 and 3,upgrade the win 98 version, and then on other partition (D:/ for example) install a full verson of windows 2000. the reason for installing the 2 operating systems is that they are use for different purposes.
if you want to use dos programs(old games) they may not run on win2k, so you'll need the win98,but for most other purposes win2k is preferable,but you don't know yet if all you hardware/software is compatible with win2k,so don't give up win98(second edition). don't give up win2k if you intent to program/develop since ms-compilers tend to crash on win9x.
but the important thing is to remember-
keep drive c: in fat mode!!
Eyal

Thanks for pointing me to this Question via the EMAIL option.  Convenient addition; interested in the final outcome.

I must agree with the others that option 3 is the best option. You can also choose for a dual boot option. Win 98 and W2K.

Mario

Forgot to say but on the Microsoft site there is a analyzer for your PC, you can download it and see what it say's.
This will checq your PC before you install W2K.

Mario

Me too, thanks as well.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/default.asp

Here are the checks I mentioned under separate cover that do a bit of an analysis prior to deciding on the W2K piece:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/upgrade/

If I understand you correctly, so have upgraded/moved the operating system multiple times over the years.  Given that, I say option 3.  If you downloaded software or uninstalled any purchased software, it can often be difficult to get the garbage left behind completely out.  I usually reformat and reinstall my systems about once a year, to clean them out and start fresh.  

A dual boot wouldn't be a bad idea, at least to start, so if you have any compatibility issues, you're not dead in the water.  I would suggest if you're the confident sort (in your computer skills) install win2K to a FAT32 partition.  Then install all the software you want.  If you have problems with anything, then install 98 (by the way, Win2K also has ICS).  You'll have to repair the boot record so Win2K boots again, but this is a relatively simply process using the Win2K setup/repair options off the CD/setup disks.

Otherwise, install 98 first, then install 2K, then install all your apps on 2K - any that don't work, install on 98.

If you're hard dirve is patitionned in at least to parts, I would go for #3, because with a history like that you must have a lot of unnecessary files.  A good clean install would probably do some good...

Since RJ is out of town, let me step in with the pieces of what I know to help you help him further.

He recently upgraded his hw to a PIII with DVD and all the standard stuff, migrating from 56K modem to ASDL and has two computers at home he'd like to connect.

With local ASDL, he'll get Ethernet card and ASDL modem.  He's got no SCSI, and has a 20GB boot drive, and 3 or 4 others.  His @20GB is partitioned in two increments ... 2GB and 17something.  He'd prefer to update but with so much old 'klunker' stuff in that system through time think he should backup what he can and reformat.  As I read the W2000 stuff though, it clearly states that all W98 backups will be blown up (so to speak), deleted.

Anyway, that's all I know; hope it helps.  I'm here listening, not participating for points; though helping where I can.

Asta

Oh yes, 132MB RAM.

132Mb of RAM is a seriously odd amount to have...sure it's not 128? Anyway, given his hard disk is already partitioned there's nothing to stop him backing his work up to the D: drive, wiping the C: drive and then restoring his work--that way he wouldn't have to worry about incompatibilities between Win98 and Win2K backup programs anyway.

If your system and all installed applications are in fine shape, i.e. the registry is not screwed up then re-installation is, at best, time consuming.
There is no question of W2000 superiority so if you only can afford the upgrade route and you won't be using the system for playing games, then go for it.
Remember to switch to W2000 native NTFS, rather than using FAT32, and compress the drive as soon as you can. Not only will your system get faster but you'll be amazed at the gobbles of additional HDD real estate you will get in the process.
For single NTFS users it's completely useless to partition the drive.
A good and cheap preacaution is to install a second drive and using Norton Ghost periodically make a complete bootable copy of your hard drive.

Pjknibbs, good eye.  It's 128MB in Windows, and 132 at boot based on what some think constitutes a meg.  Sorry for the confusion.

RJ is out of pocket until late this week.

Asta

I am sorry to reject your ANSWER, but I clearly requested COMMENTS so that this question isn't locked; hoping for general consensus and input.

The responses are valuable and I appreciate all the information very much.

Will review and decide within the next week.

Again, thank you all for your feedback.

I would recommend option three for the time being.  You said you have a DVD player, depending on if you use software decoding it may not work correctly under W2K.  Plus drivers and software updates are not all out and some are not expected for quite some time.  Your best bet would be to format your HD make part of it NTFS and put W2K on that (That way you can enjoy the benifits of it) and format the rest FAT32 and put Win98 to run what isn't W2K compatible yet.  By formating your W2K partition in NTFS you would avoid any possibility of messing it up from Win98.

                              -D

Thank you for all your help.  I've been  completely unavailable and  had no time to review anything in detail and it will be some time.  Did not want to leave you hanging.