How to clean &reinstall xp for a novice

[philthyphil]

Hi,I'm new to computers and my wife has xp windows,she has so much garbage on there,things like drag to a disc wont work and it takes ages to be operational...have been advised to wipe the hdd and reinstall xp...I have all the necessary discs ,but am all at sea re. how to go about it...does the hdd wipe itself when you put the disc in??how do I reinstall drivers or can I save them??all these questions...sure hope someone can tell me in layman terms....thanks..... philthyphil

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

You need to do the following.

Diconnect from the net and don`t reconnect, until you have your firewall software installed.

1 Restart your computer and go to setup usually by pressing the F2 or delete key.

2 Once you get into setup look for the boot menu and make sure you set it to boot from cd first followed by your hard drive.

3 Put the Windows xp disk into your cd drive.

4 Now save your settings and exit setup.

5 While your computer is booting you will see a message that says "press any key to boot from cd" press any key.

6 When the welcome to setup screen appears press enter and then press F8 to accept the Microsoft licence agreement.

7 You will be prompted to repair an installation press the escape key.

8 Now select the partition that you want to reformat and press the D key to delete it you will be asked to confirm that you want to delete the partition.

9 Now press C to create a brand new partition you will be asked what size you want the partition to be in mega bytes. If you just press enter then the partition will be the maximum size that you can have. This is perfectly ok if you don`t want to create multiple partitions.

10 You will now be asked to format the partition select the ntfs file sytem and do a full format.

11 Once the format is complete setup will continue.

Your computer will restart during the remaining setup again you will be asked to press any key to boot from cd DO NOT PRESS ANYTHING and setup will continue. Once the setup is complete and you are back in Windows remove the Windows cd from your cd drive.

Install your firewall software and reconnect to the net. Install whatever drivers you need, I.E Motherboard chipset drivers etc/video card drivers/sound drivers, then run Windows updates.

Finally, install whatever programmes/software you want.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[philthyphil]

Thanks Howard...that was pretty simplistic and even I should be able to follow the instructions...could be a while whilst I talk my wife into letting me attempt it....will keep you informed....cheers philthyphil

Just a question Howard...you say"now save your settings and exit setup"...are you prompted to save the settings and where are they saved to?..I forgot to mention..I do have a external hdd...that runs though a usb port...would that make anything easier....??thanks again philthyphil

 

[Kavi-krish]

well bro, b4 u do anything i suggest u make a back up of everything stored in ur c:\ and i suggest u do wat howard_hopkinso has said and be cool!

 

[philthyphil]

G'day to all out there who wish to help...many thanks....[instead of making a backup..mainly because I dont know how...do I just r/c on local disc/c and send to??].....would it be easier to install another new hdd and install xp...then use the one I take out as backup....or isnt this possible...go easy with me,I'm new at this....thanks...philthyphil

 

[howard_hopkinso]

When you save your settings and exit, you`re actually saving the bios settings and these are stored in the bios.

Your bios screen will tell you how to save and exit bios. On a lot of systems, pressing the F10 key starts the save and exit, but your`s may be different.

Regards Howard

 

[Kavi-krish]

Hi, taking in mind philthyphil's prob. Can he remove the old hd and install a new one. Now in the new hd he can install system files and select boot 4rm cd and do a fresh installation of an os. And then put back the old hd and selecting the old one as "slave". So he can have a master (new hd) and one slave (old hd) and then maybe he can format the slave hd in windows. will that work? thanks howard_hopkinso.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Yes, that`d work ok. Obviously it depends on whether philthyphil actually wants to buy a new hard drive.

Regards Howard

 

[philthyphil]

G'day Howard and Kavi-krish..philthy here...I already have a external hdd....would taking out the present one ..installing that and putting os xp on it....would xp recognise it...just keeping the old hdd as a backup...or is there more to it than that?...philthy

 

[howard_hopkinso]

That should work fine, just as long as you`re prepared to format the drive as per the instructions I gave you.

Regards Howard

 

[philthyphil]

Thanks Howard....philthy

 

[philthyphil]

Finally got to formatting hdd..appears that my p/c doesnt recognise that theres a disc in the drawer...so cant install xp ....checked the hardware trouble shoot and it states that the unit is working properly...is there a conflict with software?or am I need of another cd drive??...help...philthy

 

[howard_hopkinso]

You did set your cd-rom as the first boot device in bios didn`t you?

Is your cd-rom recognised in bios and during bootup?

Regards Howard

 

[philthyphil]

Yes I set the cd-romas first boot device...reckon this problem is from my better half? downloading lots of ...whatever...it just doesnt want to know there's a cd.dvd in the drive...windows came with the Dell...since then my wife has been using Roxio drag to a disc.to save whatever she saves....its worked fine until lately...I've been away and everything has stopped working....that was the reason enquiring about reinstalling xp after wiping everything off..preciate your interest....philthy

 

[howard_hopkinso]

If the drive has gone bad, then replacement is the only solution.

Just check to make sure everything`s connected properly. It might be possible that you`ve disturbed something, during the installation of the hard drive. Worth a look.

Regards Howard

 

[Kavi-krish]

HI all, i had an AST BRAVO pc and when i bought a new one i gave it to my sister, it still works. I wanted to up grade it to at least WIN 2000, it has Win 98 se, but I could not find an option that says boot from cd even though it has a cd-rom. May be becoz BIOS does not recognised the cd drive. Can you guys explain why BIOS does not recognised the drive? Thanks..

 

[philthyphil]

Howard...philthy here again...got into setup o.k...set to boot from cd....then the hard drive enabled...put the windows xp in and nothing happened...ejected and reinserted...xp opened but was only to reinstall...so did thinking that would do it...only thing is it didnt erase or reformat c drive....tried to reformat from the drive and windows wouldnt do it....what next??shall have another attempt whilst awaiting your reply....thanks...philthy

 

[howard_hopkinso]

I`m not sure what the problem is there.

I take it the hard drive is an ide drive and not sata?

Did you replace the cd drive? If you did, did you make sure it`s jumpers are set correctly?

Regards Howard