Hi everybody- I think I need to warn you- after I got grey hair over the last week... My story: I decided to upgrade from Windows 2000 Professional to Windows XP Professional after I did an online Webcheck whether my hard- and software would be compatible with an upgrade. Everything seemed to be O.K.- so I ordered the upgrade for about 168 Pounds. When I installed the upgrade I did another check from within the installation program- no problems apart from having to uninstall Apple Talk Protocoll... so far so good- when the whole thing was installed and I rebooted the computer the screen went blue and had a warning that the system had to shut down and can't reboot without damaging the computer... so I phoned Microsoft- who did not really know what the warning meant and even suggested that one of my four 256mb Ram cards could be wrong and that I should to open the computer and take them one by one out to see whether the program would then start... fortunately I had a clear moment and did not follow those instructions... Any other help over the internet as for example to download drivers and so on was unavailable- because I could not start my computer... Microsoft then advised me to phone the computer company and ask them for advice- and as you can imagine... my computer was just over a year old and not under warranty anymore... they did not feel responsible and nor did Microsoft... My computer company adviced then to reinstall the old software in repair mode- which I did folowing the instruction to reate a new folder for this system installation so not to lose all my files and my programms... which I did. The result: everything was overwritten- my computer was running or better not running on two operating systems with error messages without end about conflicting drivers and so on. Without the help of a specialist- fortunately a friend of mine- I would not have been able to rescue at least parts of it: all my internet adresses were gone- so all the e-mails that I had saved in outlook express- all my computer configurations and settings were gone- so all the nice free software over the internet... and many more things! I had to reinstall all the software- and save in each one my preference settings again- I could not find many little programms that were from time to time useful because I had forgotten where I had them from (Freeware). My adressbook could be found but only with the help of I don't know how many different specialists (would have cost me a fortune if I would have had to pay). So my warning to everybody- and yes I have now Windows XP Professional after a more than horrible week: make sure you save all the internet files and programms and everything else before you think of upgrading- even if it seems to be no problem and straight forward and be aware that in such a situation I was in no one feels responsible to help you. So for me my whole antipathy against Windows XP (I had to fight to get Windows 2000 last year because they had to sell XP and weren't allowed anymore to sell Win2K Professional) turned out to be true- I had fear that many things on my computer were not compatible- and this fear was right- I had to download tons of different drivers to make it work- but it meant a week repairwork on the computer and no time for anything else... And yes before I forget- why on earth did I do this in the first place- and this is my last warning: I wanted to upgrade to Adobe Premier Pro for my professional video editing and believe it or not (and I think we had this discussion the other day): The upgrade only works with Windows XP- so let's wait and see what happens when the upgrade from Adobe Photoshop arrives... (and by the way I phoned Adobe and complaint that it seems that they are now married to Microsoft who really seems to push XP further and further onto the market) So here I am exhausted and -for what the whole thing- so I can run my upgrade from Adobe...
Bye for now- yours -for you computer experts out there probably completely ignorant idiot Stefanie Kappel ARPS/ MBIPP Photographer& Digital Artist =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
