upgrading PC from a 98SE machine to XP - is my software compatible? 1

[brit54]

I have heard some rather nasty scuttlebutt that has me quite apprehensive. Specifically that my previously purchased microsoft office products (word, excel etc) used on my 98 machine will not work on my XP machine. Now this is software that is/was originally bought/registered by me 3 years ago. I am so uuptight about this thaaat I have my new PC sitting here in it's box and am absolutely furious that that issue may indeed be true - if so I want no part of XP and will seek another OS instead.
I have scanned the past 10 pages of comments/questions within this group, and have not seen any mention of this issue. What I have seen however has me really uptight about changing to this OS. I am fairly computer savvy but some of this chatter has me questioning my abilities and knowledge! I wanted to change OS because of the inherent instability of 98SE - now I'm not so sure and have yet to even unpack my new PC.
Would someone please shed some light on this for me or point me somewhere where I can read up on this?
I bought an HP A250 3.2 P4 with 512 3200 RAM - a real racehorse - if I dare use the damn thing !

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

Quick way to check !!

If your Office programs are installed on the 98 system you are using now, just pop the XP cd into the cd-rom drive and let it start. One of the options will be to check if your system AND programs can handle XP.

Run that option and it will advise you if your Office programs will work or if you may need to upgrade them..

Murray

 

[dakota81]

All I know of is Access 97 doesn't work perfecly with Windows XP, it's a bit slow to update database changes, but other than that, there's no stability issues or anything.

All software I used that were written for Windows 95/98 ran in XP. A lot of software written for MS-DOS does not run in XP, though.

The only other incompatibility I've had was a parallel port scanner didn't have XP drivers, that was because the manufacturer had gone out of business before XP came out.

 

[bcastner]

I have several clients running the Office Suite you intend to use without major trauma, including one site that uses a lot of a customized Access application.

One feature that may have escaped your notice is the compatability wizard of XP. I do not think you will need it in this particular case, but it is an important feature of XP and you should be aware of it:

http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/pro/using/howto/gethelp/appcompat.asp