new harddrive?

[jessicat]

I have an old laptop from 97, which came with windows 95 on it. I have made the switch to windows 2000 because there was some extreme change with the newest windows xp that requires a computer newer than the one i have. I would now like to replace the harddrive in my computer, and have been to 'bootdisk.com', but there are too many options and I don't know which bootdisk I should make. Can you help me?

[renegade600]

just place the win2k cd into the drive and boot. make sure your bios can boot from cd. See this (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=14100051&pgno=4#9) for more info.

[jdc2000]

A PC that old may not be ableto boot from the CD-ROM drive. If it can, that is the way to go. Otherwise, a Windows 98 boot diskette should work.

[GretaP]

If the computer is unable to boot from CDROM, you could create the set of 4 setup boot disks for 2K following the instructions in this MSKB article (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=197063). Alternatively, you can, as jdc2000 said, use a WIN98 startup floppy disk. If you opt to use the WIN98 startup disk, you should first load the smartdrv.exe file to the startup floppy....you can d/load the zipped archive containing smartdrv.exe from here (http://michaelstevenstech.com/SMARTDRV.zip). Extract the smartdrv.exe file directly to the WIN98 startup floppy disk. Boot from that floppy disk, choose to start WITH CDROM SUPPORT, and at the A: prompt, key in:
smartdrv
<ENTER>
Then put the WIN2K install CD in the drive and change to the drive letter for the CDROM (should be noted in a line slightly above the A: prompt, where it says "Drive X: = Driver MSCD001 unit 0", and the "X" will be replaced with the actual drive letter designation for the CDROM drive). Then change to the i386 directory and key in:
WINNT
<ENTER>
Setup should now commence.

[Alfons]

Before attempting to install W2K you should check on the following:

1. RAM size. Many of those old laptops that came with W95 had no more than 32 Megs. W2K will install and sort of run in this environment, but you'd be much better off with W98.

2. Cost & Availability of RAM. There were a lot of notebooks/laptops that had "special" RAM and it can be relatively costly when available. Check out the type of RAM from the laptop manufacturer's support website - download a manual.

3. Max RAM. The manual should tell you what the maximum upgrade would be for the machine.

4. Drivers. The support site should show you if they even support W2K with drivers for all the laptops devices. I've got an IBM T-20 that's supposedly designed for W98 & W2K - it runs fine with W98, but with W2K the graphics are awful (text mostly) and some of the devices won't work with the supplied drivers.