Win 98 or Upgrade to XP

[Pachicat]

My daughter's power supply died, taking the motherboard and cpu. I had her running Windows 98 SE. I replaced the power supply, motherboard and cpu with parts I had on hand and sent it home with her without telling her that the hard drive might fail. Of course, it did. I replaced the hard drive with one I took from my computer which already had Windows 98 SE installed on it. This hard drive was originally installed on this motherboard, so there should be no problems. However, there have been.

Besides replacing her monitor (it's very old and dying), I need to reinstall windows on top of itself and reinstall the motherboard and graphics drivers. She's just gotten dsl internet and hasn't been able to get the connection to work yet. Network problems due to not having the drivers reinstalled.

I've replaced the cd burner and the floppy drive as they were old, scavenged parts from a previous computer and were no longer functioning correctly.

Off the top of my head, I cannot tell you what the specs are, but the setup is capable of running Windows XP. I know I'm going to have to reload the motherboard and graphics drivers no matter what I do, but would I be better off upgrading her to XP home?

She's technologically illiterate, so I need something fairly idiot proof.

Thanks.

[gkline]

Try to give us an idea of the specs. Especially the amount of memory.

[Pachicat]

Thanks for your reply.

If I remember correctly, she has 512 mb RAM because that's what I had in the motherboard when I stopped using it.

The hard drive is 60 gig.

It's an ECS motherboard running an AMD, I believe 1300 MHz CPU.

She lives over two hours from where I'm working and calling and asking her what the specs are would be an exercise in futility. She's not good at taking direction on the phone regarding technical stuff.

Thanks.

[Pachicat]

I'm brain dead. I finally remembered that I ran Win XP Pro on that motherboard and cpu until I upgraded my system last summer. So I know her system is capable of running XP Home.

So, should I get her XP Home or keep her at 98 SE?

Thanks.

[Rugor]

I would go for XP Home-- more stable than 98SE (she has enough RAM with the 512) and if she goes out and gets a printer or something it will have support.

[Midknyte]

win98se support is all but dead. many apps require win2k or xp nowadays. i don't see why you would want to hold on to win98se anymore.