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Reformat Hdd And Install Winxp Pro

doctormann

By doctormann
in IT and Computers

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doctormann Gold Member

doctormann

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Posted

Hi Guys

My current installation of WIN XP Pro has, I think, reached the end of it's useful life so I need a bit of advice regarding re-installation.

Currently my system has two physical hard drives, both 100GB. The active partition on the master drive (C:) houses the operating system and is 50GB. The extended partition on this drive (F:) I use for data storage (D: and E: are DVD drives). The slave drive has two 50GB partitions: G: is used for storage and H: for backup files.

Now, being a nervous sort of guy, I am reluctant to reformat the master drive at the start and am instead considering swapping the drives over, so that the slave becomes the master and vice versa, and then installing the new operating system on the new master drive, having deleted the existing partitions.

Hopefully, I should then have a serviceable WINXP installation on the master drive. But, I will still have the old installation on what would now be the slave. Will there be any problems in repartitioning this drive, bearing in mind that the primary partition on this drive used to be the active partition? I'm not sure that you can actually delete active partitions from within Windows - but would it still be active as it's no longer on the master drive?

Any help or advice from those that know would be much appreciated.

By the way, everything that I need to keep has already been backed up onto DVDs and I do possess a WINXP Pro Installation CD.

Thanks

DM

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Guest Reimar

Guest Reimar

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Posted
Hi Guys

My current installation of WIN XP Pro has, I think, reached the end of it's useful life so I need a bit of advice regarding re-installation.

Currently my system has two physical hard drives, both 100GB. The active partition on the master drive (C:) houses the operating system and is 50GB. The extended partition on this drive (F:) I use for data storage (D: and E: are DVD drives). The slave drive has two 50GB partitions: G: is used for storage and H: for backup files.

Now, being a nervous sort of guy, I am reluctant to reformat the master drive at the start and am instead considering swapping the drives over, so that the slave becomes the master and vice versa, and then installing the new operating system on the new master drive, having deleted the existing partitions.

Hopefully, I should then have a serviceable WINXP installation on the master drive. But, I will still have the old installation on what would now be the slave. Will there be any problems in repartitioning this drive, bearing in mind that the primary partition on this drive used to be the active partition? I'm not sure that you can actually delete active partitions from within Windows - but would it still be active as it's no longer on the master drive?

Any help or advice from those that know would be much appreciated.

By the way, everything that I need to keep has already been backed up onto DVDs and I do possess a WINXP Pro Installation CD.

Thanks

DM

Most of the newer MB's Bios has a function to set either HDD 0 (1. HD) or HDD 1 (2. HD) as Boot HD. If your MB has this function than is a easy task.

It gets mor easy for later use if the Bios has the function within bootin to hit F11 (Asrock MB) or an other key to tell the comp which drive should be used for booting. Here you're able also to choose CD or DVD or FDD or USB for booting. Check out you MB's Manual and Bios.

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Guest Reimar

Guest Reimar

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You are making a simple job extraordinarily complicated and for no gain whatsoever.

Format c:\

Reinstall the OS.

Every other step you add to that brings added chances for something to go wrong.

vic's right, why make it complicated, just format and re-install, I wouldn't even partition C drive.

Sure, vic is right. But the question was: "keep the old system runni9ng" and I just shown the way how to do easy! That's all.

If it's for me I would format!!

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gharknes Gold Member

gharknes

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what is wrong with your current xp install, unless you have a serious amount of virus or other infections that you cannot get rid of then I see absolutly no reason why you would want to do this, sometimes I take a cleanup hour and uninstall all the crap that I don't need want or use anymore, then defrag the HD and my system is whistleing again.

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naka Platinum Member

naka

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Posted (edited)
what is wrong with your current xp install, unless you have a serious amount of virus or other infections that you cannot get rid of then I see absolutly no reason why you would want to do this, sometimes I take a cleanup hour and uninstall all the crap that I don't need want or use anymore, then defrag the HD and my system is whistleing again.

Obviously you've never re-formatted and then clean installed windows in a machine

which has been running for a year or more !

After a clean install you will see a far greater speed increase than you would ever get

with de-fragging etc.

Doctormann.

I agree with cdnvic. Just do a reformat and reinstall on your C drive, it's not so hard

see the link below for a step by step 'how to'.

Important.

Before you begin, go into the bios settings ( press F2 on startup or similar ) and make sure that

your CD/DVD drive is before your hard drive in the Boot order, if not then change it.

ReInstall XP ................ do a printout before you begin.

Naka.

Edited by naka
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doctormann Gold Member

doctormann

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OK people, the job is done. Thanks for the advice.

Quite straightforward, if a little time consuming. The version of XP that I now have seems even more bloated than my old version - a lot of processes run at start-up and I need to determine which of these are really necessary. Also now have IE7 - whether or not this is any better than IE6 remains to be seen, although it is supposed to be more secure.

Only one small niggle, and it's not anything of consequence, concerns the latest Windows Media Player (Version 11). There seems to be a bug affecting the Visualisations when playing audio files - the display slows right down if I switch from full-screen mode to normal mode and I can't recover from this without reselecting the visualisation type (problem is with the swirly displays only). It didn't used to be like this on the old installation, which had a previous version of WMP. I don't think that it's a display driver problem as the offending visualisations play perfectly in Power DVD. As I say, only a niggle really but does anyone out there experience the same problem and, if so, have you found a solution? The MS on-line help is not very helpful, as usual.

DM

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gharknes Gold Member

gharknes

Posted
Posted
what is wrong with your current xp install, unless you have a serious amount of virus or other infections that you cannot get rid of then I see absolutly no reason why you would want to do this, sometimes I take a cleanup hour and uninstall all the crap that I don't need want or use anymore, then defrag the HD and my system is whistleing again.

Obviously you've never re-formatted and then clean installed windows in a machine

which has been running for a year or more !

well qactually many many times, I pretty sure more times than you have and for various reasons, windows will of course slow down as you load more and more crap, you can just as easily remove it all leaving you where you started, a reinstall is not required, one single thing that will slow your system down in many way is something like Norton AV, it monitors everything you do, open files, email, downloads, surfing etc etc, you can't take a dump without going through norton first, so what might be obvious to you may just not be as you think....obviously :o

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gharknes Gold Member

gharknes

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Posted
OK people, the job is done. Thanks for the advice.

Quite straightforward, if a little time consuming. The version of XP that I now have seems even more bloated than my old version - a lot of processes run at start-up and I need to determine which of these are really necessary. Also now have IE7 - whether or not this is any better than IE6 remains to be seen, although it is supposed to be more secure.

Only one small niggle, and it's not anything of consequence, concerns the latest Windows Media Player (Version 11). There seems to be a bug affecting the Visualisations when playing audio files - the display slows right down if I switch from full-screen mode to normal mode and I can't recover from this without reselecting the visualisation type (problem is with the swirly displays only). It didn't used to be like this on the old installation, which had a previous version of WMP. I don't think that it's a display driver problem as the offending visualisations play perfectly in Power DVD. As I say, only a niggle really but does anyone out there experience the same problem and, if so, have you found a solution? The MS on-line help is not very helpful, as usual.

DM

don't know the spec of your machine but make sure have the latest drivers for your graphics card, this should fix your display media problem

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Prakanong Platinum Member

Prakanong

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Posted (edited)

"a lot of processes run at start-up and I need to determine which of these are really necessary."

A good program I was reccommended for looking at all your processes etc is whatsrunning

Available free from www.whatsrunning.net

Edited by Prakanong
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