I am getting a s/h computer from my work which is currently running Windows NT4 and I would like to upgrade it to Windows 98 or prefferably XP home. It is a Dell Optiplex with a Pentium III1 & 129.14mb ram. It has 2 hard drives one with 3gb and the second has 10gb. What would be my best option and/or how hard is it to upgrade. Thanks in advance.

I hope that "1" after the Pentium III wasn't the megahertz speed :-) So what was the cpu speed? Sounds like a great system. I wouldn't bother trying to "upgrade" to 98 or XP. Just do new installs. Recommendation: I would swap the 10gig for the 3gig in position. This is so the 10gig is c:. If you just want to have one OS then install XP on 10gig and use the 3 gig for backup of data. If you want to multiboot you could leave the drives as they are and create 3 partitions. c: would be a primary active bootable partition. This would only house the boot files for both Os's. This way if one gets trashed you didn't loose access to both. I would make the rest of the drive one primary partition which would house the OS of preference. The 3gig drive would be one primary partition. As an example if I wanted XP as primary and 98 and secondary I would do as follows; Create all the partitions and format them. Install 98 to the 3gig drive [should be d:] Install XP to the first drives 2nd partition [should be e:] Now you have a multiboot with 98 and XP. Piece of cake if you have done similar before. Lots of step by step how tos out there.

I forgot two points [and most likely more] Make sure you download and burn to cd or other method, all the Dell drivers for the OS and this model Dell. No Dell drivers for Dell hardware means could it could get touchy c: is 125meg. d: is the entire 3gig. e: is the rest of the 10gig drive which is about 9.875gigs worth.

Most likely, the best solution would be to run a clean install with XP Home because Windows NT is probably using NTFS. Like Wanderer explained, it is best to download all drivers and possibly update your BIOS before anything else. Are you sure you have 2 hard drives? Are there two inside the PC or are you going by what is in My Computer? If there are 2 hard drives, then swap jumper settings on each hard drive so that the 10GB hard drive is Master & 3GB hard drive is Slave. Verify CD-ROM is first boot device in BIOS so you can run off CD. If you're completely cleaning up PC, delete all partitions and create a new primary partition. Reformat and run installation. Last, don't forget to run Windows Updates at www.microsoft.com.