upgrading to 2000 from 98se ??

[racerbrownn]

i need to install some new hdwe in some of the pc's under my watch.
i have 3 running win98se with p4 celerons at 2.0 and lower [two i built] because of the win98 instability above 2.1 mhz.
i can get a good combo deal with a 2.8 cel and soyo mainboard but would rather use win 2000 to avoid cpu speed issues.
assuming that win 2000 is compatible with up to [how high?],
i believe i have the choice of intall with fat 16 or ntfs?
my coworker has used win 2000 before and says fat 32 is not an install option.
won't that limit my partitions to 2 gig on the hdd??

he says fat16 is far more stable than ntfs and would not recommend trying to use fat32.

xp is not an option as we have some software thats not compatible with it.

what recommendations, choices, pitfalls should i be aware of if i decide to put win2000 onto a upgraded soyo mainboard with a cel 2.8??

thankx,ray.

p.s. the units in need of upgrade a p2 400

[EzyStvy]

my coworker has used win 2000 before and says fat 32 is not an install option. ->WRONG/NOT TRUE

[thefoolisme]

In fact, I don't remember FAT 16 being an option. NTFS is a much better file system than FAT32, IMO. I have a PC running W2K, and have been very happy with it. I don't think the thing's crashed once in the past 3 years.

[racerbrownn]

thats kind of what i thought about all this but i try to avoid arguments with misinformed people if you know what i mean.

are there any issues with internet explorer 6 or cpu speed issues or etc.

does the win2000 system disc have the capability to format a new bare drive or a old drive with fat32 on it??

trying to cover all the bases before i jump into this conversion as i have never used win2000 before.

[crjdriver]

Yes the win2k disk can partition / format a blank or new drive. There are no problems with IE6 [I run it on two win2k systems at home]

Win2k does support fat16, however I would use ntfs. I have ntfs on all three machines at home and I have yet to see a crash on any of them [one xp pro sp1, and two win2k sp4]

[crjdriver]

When I do a win2k install, I like to have all of the patches, drivers, service pack 4, and any other utilities or hot fixes burned to a cdr. This way you have everything you need on one disk. I install in this order.

1) Install os
2) Install chipset / mb drivers
3) Install sp4 [if your disk does not have it allready]
4) Update to DirectX9b
5) Install sound, nic, raid / sata drivers if necessary and not installed during setup.
6) Install video driver last

This gives me the most stable system.

[crjdriver]

When your co-worker said that fat32 is not an install option, he / she is referring to a partition >32 gig. In that case, the only option given during setup for formatting the drive is ntfs.

Win2k can use a fat32 partition of greater than 32 gig, it just must be partitioned and formatted with something other than win2k setup. You could use a win9x boot disk or something like PM to partition and format the disk.

In any case I would use ntfs.

[glc]

It's FAT16 that's not an install option.

NTFS is far more stable than *ANY* FAT file system.

[racerbrownn]

actually, my coworker was quite adamant that using fat16 on install was the most stable file system he has ever used [see why i didn't want to argue].

i tried to tell him that fat 16 was limited to 2 gig and a 20 gig hdd would need 10 partitions as such.

at least now i have a better idea of whats going on. thankx, ray.