I'm trying to upgrade to Winxp from ME, but during install, one of two things happen (this is after 10 unsucessful attempts at installing this damned thing): a) when the computer reboots, and says "Gathering Info", after 70-80 minutes, the computer just reboots...then does the same thing, OVER AND OVER, in a continuous loop - OR - b) it says that a fatal error occured and it could not continue, then it restarts and tries to install again but gets the same error message. Does anyone know how to get around this? I've tried updating the bios, removing all unnecessary cards, booting from the CD, etc... all with the same results. I know people advocate a clean install, but this is not an option for me, as this is my wife's computer and her business is run from it...and ME is waaay too unstable (at least 15 reboots a day) Thanks in advance, -Eddie

What kinda computer is it? I had one the other day did kinda the same thing and it was the video card that was conflicting with the installation. I removed the video card and installed another card and it installed then i went back and installed the conflicting video card and all was well. Just would not install xp with that video card in. Sounds to me like you have something in your computer that is conflicting with the install. Hardware or software.

I did the same thing and regretted it quickly. A clean install would have been better. Minor annoyances started occuring within a day or two that were very similar to previous upgrades over old operating systems such as Win98 over Win95. Luckily, I had good data backups so I was able to reformat and creat a dual boot system without any loss of data. That way, I accomplished two things. First, a clean install of Win98 and the second, a clean install of XP to gradually set up as time permitted. I would recommend the same to you. Just create an additional partition and do a clean install of XP while leaving your ME installation as is. Then, gradually work into XP and when you are happy with it, remove the ME installation at your leisure. Incidently, since setting it up this way over seven months ago, the XP partition has run perfectly although it does not run all of my old software. None of the problems that I encountered after it was installed over the top of my existing Win98 operating system have happened to this installation. I have left the Win98 partion in place and occasionally still use it as needed. To do this, I used Partition Magic and Boot Magic because of their simplicity and flexibility. In addition to a partition for each operating system, I created a partition that is for data only. The two operating systems share that data as everything is set up as FAT32.

another option is to check out how to run me well over on the me forum. I've got a pc running me that has had no problems since i did that very thing.

I think that curing a very sick millenium by overwriting it with win xp has very little chance of succes installing a new HD as master with a clean xp gets you a fully working operating system and you should be able to acces the information on the old HD with millenium on it (installed as slave) by the way , how many programs are active simultaneously on your me computer ? press ctl-alt-del once to know the amount should be limited i have seen computers who had 20 or more (40 was the max)programs running simultaneously wich operating system can function properly in such conditions ? certainly no windows !!! you can control the amount of programs running in the "startup" tab under "system configuration utility " in win me hope it helps Gerry

What I can suggest is that you clone your hard drive so the data it contains won't be lost, then format it using the format c:/s Install the ME then upgrade and things will be fine.

How to prepare to Upgrade Windows98 and Windows ME to Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q316639