<p>The different OS's shouldn't be a problem. You'll boot up in XP and should be able to see your hard drive and determine if you can see your files. Once your files are saved, you can have XP do a format of your hard drive. This may be an excellent time to upgrade to XP from Windows 98. Student pricing should make this very cost effective.</p>
<p>Student pricing at many schools should essentially make that upgrade free. (and unless your computer is really old, it will reap the benefits)</p>
<p>when i say format.....</p>
<p>compaq gave me a recovery disc with the computer, i will simply insert that and let it do its job. it just takes the computer back to how i got it from the manufacturer....</p>
<p>what exactly wiil i have if i let xp format the harddrive? as in what will i find, if i take it back to my original computer and plug it in?</p>
<p>Formating your hard drive gets you the DOS "C:\" prompt. This allows the drive to be recognized by the computer as a valid device. Use the recovery disc to restore Windows 98. The Windows XP upgrade software needs to see a prior version of Windows before it starts the installation process.</p>
<p>dont use the recovery disk at all.</p>
<p>go down to whatever sort of tech place is at your school and get a full XP copy (it shoudl be dirt cheap or free).</p>
<p>Those restore disks are a bunch of crap...give me a real windows cd any day.</p>