Haim, sorry, dunno.
There are different sorts of OEM versions of an OS (and much more license contracts).
One license is CD's idntical to retail version, but in a white box, the other license is the right for the EOM to copy the OS (for which the OEM does not receives the CD and has even to print the manual on his own) and many variations in-between.
Beyond this, XP has had 4 major versions following the SUN arrangements:
- with Java, but no automatic installation of Java, then without Java, then with Java again, the current is without Java.
I think the hard, no-mercy, activation request has been modified in te same period.
So, better play darts than guess the version.
Activation, normally, is requested after 30 days of use.
I, myself, installed a fresh XP more than 3 times, all installations have turned out to be different. My activated version, for instance, does not allow me to login as administrator, but I can give users administrator roghts.
Changing a component as a hard drive, VGA card, motherboard will activate the activation request.
Could be that the OEM upgrade (I guess the disk is an upgrade) would by-pass the activation request as long as the OS can find a couple of key files from previous Win versions.
Shouldn't be a problem. Just call the servic at Microsoft, tell'em as little as possible: "Hello, changed my hard drive, how can I re-activate?" should be enough to be serviced.
Booting:
don't know about instaling XP over Win98.
No problem installation is the dual-boot (multiboot) which (for once) is a nice piece of programming.
I am not sure, nut I believe XP can handle hard-disk partitionning without data loss. Although I wouldn't trust MSFT for hard disk handling and I would prefer GNU freewares or commercials as PartitionMagic from PowerQuest to do the job.
Typically, the Win98 and the XP would be on different partitions, and the boot would be handled through bootcfg.
You then have a boot screen, black and white, asking you to choose for the boot system.
Mail databases:
Netscape/Gecko/Outlook/Outlook Express plus all the other mail clients have import/export functions.
I don't use them, have had a mess with double entries.
Security feature:
many worms around there look for addresses they find primarely in the Address Book, then in your mail databases.
A couple of years ago, I started saving my mails individually in another directory/sub-directories: save as "mail" which are *.eml extensions (these are pure ASCII files) you then can read with any editor.
Stoopid work when you start.
Now that I am usd to, when I read a mail, I save it with two-clicks, then delete it from my database. Old mails are on a CD.
Address book is in a stoopid spreadsheet. (Btw, another stoopid spreadsheet keeps my bookmarks).
Even further in personal security:
got nothing under "My Documents", too easy for an intruder to downlaod them.
In short, try to get rid of large mail databases for security reasons, but also for perfomance: these files are yo be opened and stay open as long as you use your mail client. |
