installing windows 2000 over xp - can it be done?

[stickyb]

a friend of mine took his pc into a repair shopout in Asia, and one of the things they did was overwrite his win2k installation with windows xp - which he did not want, especially as they used a fake version of xp that won't update, etc.

He still has the win2k cd original, and asked me if it was possible to reinstall win2k without loosing everything else - anyone got any ideas?

[matelot]

Of course, your mate is going to back up everything first so that if it does all go mammaries up, he won't have any worries. :ok: He also needs to note all his hardware types just in case he needs to re-install, email settings in Outlook etc. All needs to be to hand.

Unless someone has already done it and offers counter advice, I'd run the CD and elect ntfs file system (not FAT32) when offered the choice. That will ensure compatibility with XP.

If it does go wrong, that's the time to trash the drive and start again clean.

[Saab Dastard]

Simple answer - you can't.

It's a case of backing everything up, noting all settings and components and doing a complete format and re-install.

Given this situation, I would buy a new hard disk and an external USB caddy.

Put the new HD in the laptop, and the old one in the caddy - you should then be able to read the old one without any problem after the clean install, so all the data, etc. will still be accessible.

Also worth trying is the User Settings Migration Wizard - though I'm not sure if it is on the Win2K CD. But you may be able to download it from MS.

SD

[IO540]

I don't see how one can install win2k over XP, or vice versa for that matter, without losing all application settings.

I have installed win2k many times and have never seen any option to pick up old app settings. Maybe there is something I have been missing all along :)

The last time I saw the option to pick up previous app settings was installing windows NT4 over windows 3.1, and that worked sort of OK because most 3.x apps didn't use the registry.

[stickyb]

Thanks for the advice, tried a few things but it seems there is no way to go back. Everything backed up so wipe and reinstall done OK.