Don’t Try This at Home: Windows 2000 Upgrade
If you have a PC at home, or if your office doesn’t have an in-house PC guru, think twice before trying to upgrade a Windows 98 or Windows 95 machine to Windows 2000.
Start by paying attention to the warnings on the back of the Windows 2000 Professional box. A chart asks, “Which Windows is right for you?” and concludes that good old Windows 98 has “broadest support for consumer hardware and software.” The new Windows 2000, says Microsoft, has the “highest reliability, enhanced security and best support for mobile business computing.”
In other words, Windows 2000 is less likely to crash, more likely to protect your privacy and more likely to work better with your laptop. But it’s less likely to work with printers, joysticks, digital cameras, games and other hardware and software that many home users rely on.
Bottom line: Windows 2000 is not the successor to Windows 98; it’s the descendant of Windows NT, which is used primarily by businesses. Yet it is possible to upgrade a Windows 98 or 95 machine to Windows 2000, and because it is more reliable, it is a tempting proposition even for some home users.
Take me, for example. I run an office out of my home and typically have a word processor, e-mail program, Web browsing software, personal finance program, anti-virus software and one or two other programs running at the same time. For reasons I can’t explain, one or another program sometimes crashes.
With Windows 98, this usually brings down the entire machine, requiring me to restart the PC. Sometimes even a “soft re-boot” (pressing the control, alt and delete keys simultaneously) doesn’t do the trick. I have to turn the power off and back on again. Any unsaved documents wind up in data heaven.
Then there’s Windows 98’s so-called sleep mode. I often leave my machine running all night, and it goes into a power-saving mode after a few hours. Trouble is, it doesn’t always wake up when I’m ready to get back to work. The only way to get it out of its coma is to turn it off and back on again. Give me a break.
Windows 2000 is much less likely to crash. Not only does it wake up after a night’s sleep, but if a program misbehaves, that program stops but the rest of the software continues to run.
After years of putting up with system crashes from Windows 98 and its predecessors, the idea of a more stable operating system is very tempting. What’s more, even though Microsoft makes no claims that Windows 2000 will work with the software and hardware typically used on home systems, it does in fact work with most of the programs I tested.
It did fine with the Quicken 2000 personal finance program, Paint-Shop Pro photo editing software, the Lego Friends music and activity program for kids, my son’s copy of Quake II and WinAmp, a popular program for playing MP3 audio files. Not only do all those programs work, I was able to run them all at the same time--along with Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet Explorer and several other programs--without any of them crashing. Try that with Windows 98.
Yet there are some nagging exceptions. Although Windows 2000 works with more than 3,000 printers, it won’t work with my Hewlett-PackardPhotoSmart ink jet printer until updated software (called a driver) is made available sometime this spring. Even the software required for Microsoft’s own MSN Internet service won’t support Windows 2000 until some time in March.
In the meantime, Microsoft offers a “workaround for the technically minded” which is a euphemism for “forget it if you’re a mere mortal.” I couldn’t get Windows 2000 to run Art Explosion T-Shirt Factory, Barbie’s Magic Hair Styler or EdMark’s Mind Twister Math game. And--as Microsoft admits--plenty of other Windows programs just won’t run under Windows 2000.
Microsoft has a Web page (https://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/compatible) with a program you can download to check your system for hardware and software incompatibilities, as well as compatibility for specific computers, programs and hardware devices. To its credit, the company is conservative about compatibility claims.
Even if you think your system is compatible, be very careful before you upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. I tried it on two systems that were listed as compatible. On one machine the upgrade went smoothly, but on another I kept getting error messages and never could get Windows 2000 to replace Windows 98. I was, however, able to install Windows 2000 in “dual boot” mode, which means that instead of writing over Windows 98, Windows 2000 is installed in a separate area of the disk so that the computer can be started using either operating system.
Although it takes up more disk space, it does allow you to experiment with Windows 2000 without giving up Windows 98, but you have to reinstall all of your software.
Robert Kraft, an Anaheim Hills life insurance agent, wasn’t so fortunate. KNX radio’s Technology Hour show sent him a copy of Windows 2000 to try out, and not only was he not able to get it to work, he wound up losing all of his software and data, including his old Windows 98 installation. It’s not entirely clear what went wrong, but he is living proof that upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 is not for the technologically unsophisticated or the faint of heart.
Whatever you do, never undertake any operating system upgrade without first backing up all of your data and making sure you have the installation CDs for your previous operating system and all of your critical software.
Aside from compatibility issues, I’m bothered that Microsoft has segmented the market into a reliable operating system for business and a flaky one for home users. It strikes me as obvious that all of Microsoft’s customers deserve reliable software. Later this year, Microsoft plans to role out a successor to Windows 98--called Windows ME (for millennium edition), which is basically just an updated version of Windows 98. A more robust consumer operating system, code-named Whistler, is expected sometime in 2001.
In the meantime, Apple is putting the finishing touches on its upcoming OS X operating system, which won’t work on some older Macs. In other words, the operating system wasn’t designed specifically for businesses or consumers but for people. What a concept.
*
Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 2:10 p.m. weekdays on the KNX (1070) Technology Hour. He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com.
