T20 and XP

gzieses · November 11th, 2003, 11:02 AM

I have a T20. It has Windows 2000 on it and I would like to change to XP Pro. I looked on the IBM website for info on OS installations. It asked me for my model number, etc, but only gave me info on everything except XP. Could someone give me some guidance as what I need to do to change to XP? I'm hoping it's not that it can't be done on the T20. Do, I simply download the latest bios (mine is the original) ? Or, are there more things to do?

Thanks in advance for any help

Gary

**EvilRick** · November 11th, 2003, 11:11 AM

You shouldn't need to d/l the latest BIOS.

If it doesn't have any documentation on XP, they're probably saying it's not supported or they haven't tried to install it.

What are the specs?

CPU
RAM
HDD

If you've got at least an 800MHz PIII w/ 256MB RAM and 10GB HDD, you shouldn't have any problems getting it setup. Just run w/o all the "eye candy".

gzieses · November 11th, 2003, 11:18 AM

ER:

It's the 750mhz pIII with 20gig HD and 392mb ram. I did an upgrade on a toshiba tecra 8100 with 500mhz pIII and at least Toshiba and it's user board showed several downloads to use when moving to XP. It's a shame IBM shows nothing on their site. Plus they've unplugged their user forum. What gives on that?

Thanks,

Gary

**EvilRick** · November 11th, 2003, 11:26 AM

I stand corrected, they recommend BIOS v1.17 for XP
Version 1.21 can be had here

There are some driver d/l's you'll want to get from here

There seems to be good support and those are some good specs, I'd backup what you need to and install.

aldtech · November 12th, 2003, 02:49 PM

A T20 will run XP fine, just D/L the latest bios update like EvilRick says and backup all your data and you should be all set.

However, as a desktop support tech, I would highly recommend that you do a complete OS install instead of an upgrade from 2K therefore you will lessen the chance of the os blowing up on you.

AL

rastorize · November 12th, 2003, 04:50 PM

Yep, the T-20 runs XP just fine...my last laptop was a T-20 with XP...but do get the bios update.

gzieses · November 13th, 2003, 12:44 AM

Thank you Aldech and Rastorize for your comments and encouragement to switch to XP. I do plan to do a clean install to avoid any chances of contamination.

An additional question. I've gotten information about trying Linux through the use of the version called SuSe. Any thoughts on that? Maybe setting up as a dual boot environment?

Thanks,

Gary

**EvilRick** · November 13th, 2003, 12:51 AM

That distro will definitely make you learn *nix.

If you wanna get into and have a little more learning curve, go w/ RedHat (Fedora) or Mandrake. Those are the "in" distros that you'll get tons of support for.