Hi My computer is about 2 months old. Windows 98SE OS. I purchased 512MB RAM because it appeared relatively cheap. Yesterday I was advised on the telephone that I had wasted my money nevertheless. Reason was Windows 98SE could only access about (and he was not quite sure on this) but around maximum of 256MB of that. Suggested I should move immediately to operating system Windows 2000. If I did would that make use of the full 512MB of RAM please? With a hard disk of around 55 GB could I somehow partition this and arrange dual-booting? Without upsetting my present configuration of programs working OK at present? Please discuss for me to assist. Thanks in advance. By the way in passing I tried to install IE 6.0 over my IE 5.5 and went on the Internet using 2 ISPs and with both I could not get through to the Web. It would not contact or access any servers. Uninstalled back to 5.5 - all OK? Am I missing something here!! David

I have Win98 SE with 512 MB of RAM and Win98 works with all 512 MB. You can go to Windows 2000 but your hard drive won't be a FAT32 partition anymore, it will be a NTFS partition. If you don't care. Here is some info about your memory problem: http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/79521.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/87525.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/83331.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/83382.html This might answer your question.

Jonathan What a good reply and many thanks. Put my mind at rest now. I did go up and read many interesting link articles you gave me. It does answer my question. One thing, any ideas on the IE 6.0 point I raised please? I have a machine 266MHz as well about 5 years old. Put IE 6.0 on it and it worked fine with both ISPs. I put Netscape Communicator 4.76 and Netscape 6.0 on it and again it worked fine. No problems at all and it uses Windows 98SE that I put on from scratch. This new machine has the OEM manufacturers Windows 98SE albeit the latest operating system version and a K56 and V90 compatible modem and none of the foregoing work on it. Into the bargain I cannot download Explorer 6.0 from the Microsoft website on this new machine. On the old machine I am using an external V90 straight Pace Voice 56 modem. Could it be that the simple PCI Conexant modem is not as useful in this respect. It creating its own COM 3 port through the computer as I understand it. Any ideas on all this, because I cannot follow how my old Pentium II can cope in this direction and the new machine is giving all these problems. Many thanks - and yes this is a good Forum. Cheers. David

There are a lot of issues here. Jonathans' information is good and informative, but he has one thing wrong. Windows 2000 can be installed using Fat32. During the install you will be asked if you want Fat32 or NTFS as a filing system. IE6.0 is not that big a difference from 5.5 and if you are having trouble with it - screw it. You're not going to miss a thing. However if you insist on using it, then after you install it, go through and remove and then reinstall the TCP/IP Protocol. If that doesn't fix things up, try changing the DNS control numbers to - "Allow the server to assign DNS numbers". Any internal modem will need a COM Port assigned to it. If your computer has 2 COM Ports built onto the motherboard, then a 3rd must be installed prior to installing the modem. You do this from the ADD and Remove Hardware icon in the Control Panel. If your motherboard has 1 COM Port then the same is true, however the new COM Port will be COM Port-2 -- and so on. The biggest advantage to an External Modem is, you can watch the direction of data flow. That means if someone is stealing from you, or trying to hack your unit, you can see the lights flashing, and see which way the data is flowing - in or out!

I had some problems with IE 6.0. I just like IE 5.5 SP2. What I would do is uninstall both IE 6.0 and 5.5. Then put a clean install of IE 6.0. So you will have just one Internet Explorer Browser. I might have to delete the Internet Explorer folder, just be careful of doing that. Make sure you have Internet Explorer Installation on a CD or on your hard drive, so you can install it from the CD or the hard drive. Also, I think I made a mistake about Windows 2000 info. I never use Windows 2000 before, but a friend has it. More info about this: http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/13901.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/74054.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/86226.html Hope this help

FJ, Jonathan Thanks to you both for a lot of good info. Jonathan, as I see it at the moment on Add/Remove Programs I am unable to uninstall Internet Explorer. Any ideas on how to do this please? Yes, I do have a CD with Internet Explorer 6.0 on it. But as IE is an integral part of Windows 98SE would uninstalling be permitted? Cheers. David

Hi Dave, You're quite right! Win98 won't permit you to uninstall IE6 that way (when you upgraded from IE5x to IE6, it just proposes to downgrade). To uninstall, it's necessary to download a utility the name of which I don't remember (98lite or something like that... I could still see that on this forum yesterday)... I hope someone will tell you better! Gérard from Paris, France