I have a Dell which I am about top reformat. I have the XP2 Reinstallation
Disk (Home Edition). It appears that when I begin reinstalling process that I
will end up with 2 versions on the disk.
No, you are doing it wrong. You are trying to reinstall from within
Windows.
Just boot from the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot order if
necessary to accomplish this) and follow the prompts for a clean
installation (delete the existing partition by pressing "D" when
prompted, then create a new one).
You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
or here
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_install_windows_xp.htm
or here
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm
or here
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm
However why do you want to do this? In my view, it's usually a
mistake. With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to
reinstall Windows (XP or any other version). I've run Windows 3.0,
3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and
now Windows Vista, each for the period of time before the next version
came out, and each on two or more machines here. I never reinstalled
any of them, and I have never had anything more than an occasional
minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates,you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for your
system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work the
way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.
And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find your back in exactly the
same situation.
