Now that Microsoft is planning to
effectively kill off Windows XP in April 2014, many XP users are trying to
decide whether to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8.1, dump Windows altogether and switch to Linux,or
simply replace their old PC with a new one.
Personally, I think switching to
Ubuntu Linux is a great way to go if the PC is used primarily for email and
Internet access, but as long as the hardware is new enough to support Windows
8.1, that’s a great choice as well.
If you decide to upgrade Win XP to
8.1, it’s a good idea to prepare for the upgrade before jumping into it.
Here
are my recommendations:
1 – Find out if your old PC will
even run Windows 8.1. At a bare minimum, it should have all the following:
- 1 GHz CPU (or faster)
- 1 GB RAM if you plan to run Windows 8.1 32 bit or 2 GB for 64 bit
- 16 GB of free hard drive space for 32-bit or 20 GB for 64-bit
- A graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX 9 w/ WDDM driver
Keep in mind that the hardware
requirements listed above are the bare minimum for running Windows 8.1,
which leads me to the rest of my recommendations…
2 – Add as much RAM to the system as
you can afford, up to at least 4 GB. The more RAM the CPU has at its disposal,
the faster and smoother the system will run.
3 – Replace the hard drive with a
small, inexpensive Solid State Drive (64 GB will easily suffice) to make your
programs load faster and decrease the time it takes for the PC to boot up into
Windows.
4 –Take entire backup of old data to
an external USB drive and ensure that your data files will be ready for use
immediately after upgrading the operating system from Windows XP to Windows
8.1.
5 – Visit the “Support” sections of the
websites of the companies that manufactured each of your major hardware
components to see if there are Windows 8 or 8.1 hardware drivers available. The
devices you need to pay the most attention to here are the network adapters,
the video adapter, the sound card and the optical drive. If there are no
Windows 8 or 8.1 drivers available, a driver written for Windows 7 will most
likely work.
Download the updated drivers onto a
USB flash drive for easy installation once the O.S. upgrade has been completed.
Be sure to download a driver version (32 or 64 bit) that matches the version of
Windows 8.1 that you plan to install. While there is a good chance that updated
drivers will be installed automatically right along with Windows 8.1, that is
certainly not guaranteed – hence the old saying “better safe than sorry”
applies.
6 – Make sure that any applications
that you’re currently running under Windows XP will also run under Windows 8.1.
If not, be prepared to upgrade the “orphaned” apps to a newer version or replace
them with a different, but equivalent app after the upgrade has taken place.
While there are never any guarantees
when it comes to upgrading the operating system on older computer hardware,
completing the steps listed above will give you the best opportunity possible
for having a smooth, trouble-free upgrade experience and a faster, smoother
running PC than the one you started with.
Keep in mind that you cannot upgrade
directly from Windows XP to Windows 8.1. Instead, you’ll have to perform a
clean installation of Windows 8.1 which will wipe all of your programs and
data from the hard drive or SSD as part of the installation process. That’s why
steps 3 and 4 above are so strongly recommended. First, you’ll get a larger, faster
drive to work with and your data files will remain in place and be accessible
from the old drive.
And here’s one final thing for you
to consider: Even though a Windows 8.1 upgrade package will work when upgrading
from XP, you’ll still have to perform a clean installation instead of an actual
upgrade. For that reason I recommend buying the full version of Windows 8.1
instead of an upgrade package.
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