General computer question

[daisygirl825]

I am trying to assist my mom with her computer. (Not knowing a great deal myself.) She has problems with it "locking up", where she will have to shut down or pull plug to get it to run again. She also has general compatibility issues such as the CD burner never really ran with the set up she has.
She is being told that if she would get the XP program and uninstall everything she has now, that it would run better & solve some of these issues for her. What will the XP program do differently or better than Windows '98?

 

[catalyst1]

Well, XP is a lot more friendly with today's accessories and computer parts. Tons of drivers are included with it, but that shouldn't be much of a problem if you have the driver discs. Also, when first reading this, the power supply came to mind. You might be pulling too much power. What wattage is it rated?

 

[Dishdog]

Can we have some specs of the computer? if yoiu don't know any of them download everest(google it) and it will tell you everything about your computer.

 

[UK31337]

Windows 98 is old now (is it Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition? There's a significant difference).

Depending on the specs of your PC, XP might not be an option. As dishdog said, go to http://www.lavalys.com and download the free version of Everest. It'll tell you everything you need to know about your system and what's inside it.

Tell us the specifications of your PC based on what Everest tells you, and we'll be able to help you from there.

 

[thebigdintx]

Did you already try defraging the hard drive, and deleting the cookies and temporary files. That sometimes helps. You may consider upgrading the RAM to make it run faster/better also.

 

[Paradox1]

Thats exactly what you just said to that other person...


And I have XP running on an old Windows 98 SE PC, 8 Years old, Crashes every time I open 2 programs at the same time, Gotta run it ghetto style until I get a new one. It's definately not something you want to do if you dont know much about how a computer operates.

To answer your question, Windows XP has alot of plug and play features that werent included with 98. It also has many drivers that comes with the OS that you can use to run peripheral devices. It is more "user friendly" But it takes up alot more system resources that the older versions of windows did So if you install XP on an old computer you are very likely to have more problems than you fixed. Not to mention a Windows XP disc runs about 99 dollars.

Depending on your specifications you might just want to buy a new computer, I have found a majority of computers that came with windows 98/98SE are not worth upgrading. A majority, not all