Installing Windows XP

OK, we have got about a 3 year old Gateway laptop in one of my clases at school. Right now it has Windows 2000 and 98 installed on it as a dual boot setup- I believe. We are now wanting to install XP onto it. As far as backing up files, can we just but the ones that we need onto a flash drive(mainly documents and a couple of Powerpoints)? And, will XP simply instal over the the 2000 operating system? How hard is it to do this?
Sorry for all of the questions, I just don't want to mess up a laptop that isn't mine.

[Panama Red]

Are you wanting to create a multi boot with all three OS's or wipe the hard drive and only install XP? If your flash drives are large enough to handle the files you want to save then, yes, that is one way to save them.

I think that we are planning to wipe the hard drive. My instructor(I'm in JROTC) said that that they will not be needing the other OS's. Are there any other options for backing up the files?

[flanzig1]

If the laptop has a CD burner, that's another way of saving files. The thumb drive is probably the easiest. Also, you will need the drivers for that laptop, should be able to download them from Gateway.

[Panama Red]

Wiping the hard drive and installing XP can easily be done with the XP disk. Just set the bios to boot to the cd drive first, insert the XP disk and watch for the "Press any key to boot from the CD..." notice. When you select the new installation option, delete all previous partitions before creating a new one for the XP install. Deleting the existing partitions will effectively remove the previous OS's.

OK, thanks so much. I have just one more question: What type of files should I back up? And, once the OS is installed, do I just upload those files under My Computer? Thanks again for all of the help.

[Panama Red]

Unless someone has stored files in locations other than My Documents, that's the area I backup when reformatting. Multiple users will each have their own My Doc's. If anyone has Favorites stored on that computer, you can save those too. Just copy the files to the same locations after XP is installed.

[glc]

I usually use a USB hard drive and clone the whole hard drive onto it. That way, if you miss saving something (this almost always happens) you can go back in and find it. My USB hard drive housing (Apricorn) came with cloning software.

Thanks for all of the replies so far. Today at school, I found out that the 512MB USB drive was not capable of holding all of the information. However, we do have a nice custom computer, which I'm sure has a fairly big hard drive. So, could we maybe set up a network between the two PC's and transfer the files we need before and after the OS installation? The reason I ask this is because the laptop dosen't have a CD Burner.

Here is a link to the laptop if anybody needs to see it(which I doubt):
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,23186,00.asp