Boot failure

[murphy]

Sorry, I'm a newbie in this area, could you tell me what's
the difference between reformat and clean install of xp?
Or a repair will be better? I'm going to go crazy over
this matter....

 

[M. Rajesh]

Hi,

Reformat: means an existing O/S was there and u will have
to reformat the hard disk to go for a fresh install.

clean install: means you will have to back up data, save
the settings and then format the hard disk and install
Win XP from scratch and then put back the data and
install the applications again. Advantage is better
performance and no compatibility issues.

Repair: means that something has gone wrong in the
booting up of windows xp and so u use the repair option
of your windows xp setup to restore it to the normal
state.

Regards
M. Rajesh
www.winxpsolution.com

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Sorry, I'm a newbie in this area, could you tell me what's
the difference between reformat and clean install of xp?

They are essentially the same. You reformat in order to perform a
clean (not over the top of an existing operating system)
installation.

A clean installation is usually differentiated from an upgrade
installation.

Or a repair will be better?

That depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Sorry, I'm a newbie in this area, could you tell me what's
the difference between reformat and clean install of xp?
Or a repair will be better? I'm going to go crazy over
this matter....

A clean reinstall and a format and reinstall are essentially two
different ways of putting the same thing.

A repair would be the thing to try in the first instance, provided you
have a 'retail' CD of XP and not one of the Restore or Recovery ones
that come with a new machine - those will usually put you back to
ex-factory state and no option . Contrary to another post, you should
*not* regard a format as a piece of regular maintenance. But I have to
say that the noises suggest you may have a disk dying or something of
the sort. So first thing is to back up important data off the machine,
in case.

Then if it is a retail CD, power up and hit the hotkey (often DEL, but
see the machines manual) to get into BIOS setup. There in either a BIOS
or CMOS settings page, or a separate Boot one, adjust the 'Boot order'
to boot from the CD before Hard drive. ESC out and Exit, saving
settings.

Then Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD,
start Setup (do not take 'Repair' at this stage), then after the license
agreement take 'Repair Installation'. This will retain your existing
software installations and most settings. But Updates will have to be
run again, especially SP1;
It is important to activate the basic XP Firewall before you ever
connect to the net to get the patches, so as to be protected against
things like the BLAST worm.

 

[David]

Sorry, I'm a newbie in this area, could you tell me what's
the difference between reformat and clean install of xp?
Or a repair will be better? I'm going to go crazy over
this matter....

There isn't much difference between "Re-format" and "Clean install" as
if you do a re-frmat, you haveto do a clean install. Formatting wipes the
disk and prepares it to accept data. Clean install is usua;;y used to
refer to wiping out an out an OLD OS ( Win98, WinME ) then installing the
new OS.

A repair on the other hand means youare installlin an OS over itself,
which would repair/replace any damaged system files. XP provides this as
on option on the Boot CD and is preffered over doing a format & clean
install as you won't lose any already installed programs files. You would
to to re-install your programs though so that all they registry keys get
reset properly and you would need to re-install drivers. Repairing is
usually safe, but it's recommend to back-up important data files in case
something should go wrong.

BTW, I had something similar happen to me. It was my hard drive. It
froze and had to be replaced. Open you case and listen carefully to the
HDD when you boot the computer to see if you can hear the HDD spin up

--

David

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