Hello people,
About a year ago I built my pc - Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB ram, 200GB SATA hd, I purchased XP Pro off ebay which turned out to be non genuine so now I am unable to receive updates etc etc! When I originally installed the OS I never partitioned it so what I am looking to do now is make a fresh start & purchase a new OS, I was debating on XP 64bit... maybe somebody can advise me which 1 to go for, (I do some video editing and burning to dvd), and i also want to add another matching hard drive.
What i will do if you agree, is install the new hard drive, update the bios and then run a clean install with the new OS cd i.e 64bit creating a partition. Is this correct? and your O/S opinions would be much appreciated. Thanks

Hello Bruce

Welcome to PC Help Forums

Hey it's your PC, install what you like, but to get the Full Monty on what to get and what not to get please bide with us for just a short while until our Tech team get back to you, if that's ok.

Hi Brucelee543,

Ok where to start,
The pc counds pretty good so you could go for XP.
There are also some pretty good versions of Linux out there, but, only go there if you're prepared to scream into a vertical learning curve, which my/may not result in the pc getting it's ballistic properties tested.
I'm not too sure about 64bit yet as there still seems to be a few gaps in the drivers department for some peripherals that you might install, so they'll not work.
The idea of getting a new drive and installing the new o/s onto that is good, means less hassle with data transfer as you can slave the old drive, copy the data off and then format it and use it for data storage.
Hope that helps a bit, get back to us wih any more questions you may have.

I was running XP Pro x64 for over a year without adriver issue...and now i'm running Vista Enterprise x64 without a driver issue.

I'd suggest goign to 64bit purely because that's the future.

Tks radar & GaRHaR, its just a shame you disagree on the os; -) I do see where you are both coming from and am aware of the driver issues on 64bit so maybe i should do some more research there! Also can you tell me, if I went for the 64bit how do I go about adapting the motherboard drivers i.e chipset? My motherboard is a ASUS A8N-E, do i update all i can before i install the new os? Thanks

Hey brucelee! My welcome to PCHF!

64bit drivers for your mainboard can be found here -

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

Alternatively you can use nVIDIA Geforce 8800 7950 7900 7600 GT GTX ATi Radeon x1950 x850 x1900 x1800 1600 XT Pro - Guru of 3D: PC Hardware Reviews to download all your driver needs - 64bit or 32bit.

You won't be able to "upgrade" to the new OS....so you'll have to reinstall windows....which means you'll have to install the drivers when you finish installing the OS.

For best stability and speed...install them in this order.
1) Windows
2) Chipset drivers
3) Video card drivers
4) all other drivers and updates

And in regards to 64bit windows...originally when it came out there were heaps of driver issues....and that's why everyone keeps saying that now - but there is no problem with running it now. I play games as old as Quake 1 on Vista x64 - so...compatability issues? Not as many as people say.