Upgrading form previous versions of windows to Windows XP

If you are working with Windows Me, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 98, you can upgrade it directly to windows XP with the Microsoft Support. Windows XP recognizes both NTFS and FAT file systems so the computers formatted by these file systems can be upgraded to XP. However, if you are using earlier versions of windows such as Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation 3.51, it is not possible to directly upgrade from these versions to Windows XP because these operating system requires interim upgrades to the version of windows through which direct upgrading to window XP is possible.
Before moving on to start the upgrading to windows XP few considerations must be kept in mind. First of all it is very important to see that whether the computer meets the hardware and software compatibility requirements for Microsoft windows XP. You can consult the web catalog available on the internet for supported hardware. Before upgrading an effective work is to generate a system compatibility report before you start the upgrading process. The advantage of this report is that you will get an analysis about the potential problems that you might face after the upgrade and so it can provide the possible solutions for all the problems. The method of generating this report is by selecting the Check system compatibility option on the splash screen that you can see when you insert the installation CD. Another way of generating report is at the start of the setup when you can type winnt32/check in the command line. After that if you find any problems regarding compatibilities then you can apply the proper updates and after then continue with the upgradation procedure. If you find any incompatible software uninstall that until you find the proper replacements.
The next step is to check the system’s BIOS (basic input/output system) version to verify that it must be the latest and revised one. Before initializing the Windows XP upgrade it must also be verified that BIOS-based virus protection is disabled as the antivirus feature of BIOS interprets the setup attempts for the modification of boot sector as virus-activity and try to stop the modifications. It results in setup failure.
Data backup of important files must be taken to prevent from a potential loss because when you are performing upgradation or any other major operation there is always a possibility of system failure so this consideration must be kept in mind before initializing the upgradation. Also scan and remove any viruses from the system because it can cause the setup to terminate in between the process. Uncompress the drives, if there is any, because compression is not supported by Windows XP other than NTFS and it prohibits the use of Doublespace, Drivespace or any third party compression formats. After all these tasks follow the simple steps that are available on your screen and your operating system will upgrade to Windows XP.