Hi Jim,

That's interesting. I've never tried ZipMagic, but it sounds like a very handy utility. I must have misunderstood about the extent of NTFS/Win9X compatibility issues. Maybe it had something to do with the ability to access NTFS files directly across partitions on a multi-boot machine, without going across LAN. I thought this required third party tools. Since Win2K Pro itself (as well as PartitionMagic) can handle conversion from FAT to NTFS, I don't see any reason to mess with NTFS any time soon, but it's nice to know that this option is available.

I will, as always, make every effort to be prepared for the possibility of having to do a clean reinstallation of everything. Meanwhile, I'll cross my fingers and take measures to give myself a much less painful alternative by using Norton Ghost. And of course, I will rely on less heavy-handed backup procedures for more frequent incremental backups of my own data.

The Dell Inspiron 8100 came with Win2K Pro SP1 and MS Office XP Professional preinstalled. I'd be surprised if there's any problem handling the screen's 1600X1200 resolution. I'm not sure about the need for SP2, so I'll wait and see about that. I vaguely recall seeing messages about problems with SP2, and I guess that Dell hasn't yet officially given it's seal of approval. If someone knows of a specific, compelling reason to upgrade to Win2K Pro SP2, that would be useful to know about.

Thanks for the info, Jim.

Mike

>Hi Mike!
>
>At home I have mixed FAT32 and NTFS (2xFat32 (WIN98 and WINME) and 1xNTFS) and do NOT have any 'compatibility' problems that I can detect. From my observations of ZipMagic (installed on only 1 machine, FAT32), each machine's OWN file system reads/writes data on its own machine. So, for example, when I view a zipped file on the drive of the machine having ZipMagic FROM my NTFS machine, I see all of the content of the zipped file, so obviously ZipMagic is doing that. Similarly, copying that same file from the ZipMagic machine to the NTFS system ends up giving mean UNZIPPED bunch of files (usually in a directory).
>
>As regards never having to reinstall. . . that used to me my approach and that led to two serious problems for me. When the eventuality of needing to did happen, I couldn't find the damned thing for days. Then came the problem of trying to remember how I had installed it in the first place. Never could, since it had been so long ago.
>So I went to an approach much like Cindy Describes. Works well for me. And my systems are all basically vanilla too, though I do have quite a mix of software, varying on various. NO beta stuff, no "free for download" stuff operating, no "shareware" installed or operating.
>
>Cheers,
>Jim
>
>PS I bought a Latitude last February and later bought and installed Office 2000 Developer Edition. It has never worked correctly on the Latitude, running Win2000 (SP1, then SP2) and all the downloadable fixes for both the OS and Office. I blame it on the screen resolution of 1400x1050 that is default on the Latitude. I think yours comes installed at 1600x1200 and I suspect it works nicely with that res.
>
>good luck
>
(SNIP)