Duplicate installations

[General Mailbox]

Greetings,
Doing a fresh installation of WinXP on top of an existing WinXP came up with
the notice about this occurance, but also stated that ALL data would be lost
if I continue. I continued with the installation without a format, since the
format (NTSF) was already applied on the partition, expecting everthing to
be overwritten. I've discovered that under the C:\Document and Setting
folder hat there are two All Users folders (All Users / All Users.WINDOWS),
two Default User folders (Default User / Default User.WINDOWS), two
LocalService folders (LocalService / LocalService.NT AUTHORITY), and two
NetworkService folders (NetworkService / NertworkService.NT AUTHORITY). The
All Users.WINDOWS folder is the one being changed by the system as I install
things.
Question: Is there any known problem with this setup, that I may encounter,
where I should do the installation process over again?

I have already put in more than a day's worth of time in patches and
software installations before realizing this.

Thank you.
B.rgds,
Kevin

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Greetings,
Doing a fresh installation of WinXP on top of an existing WinXP came up
with the notice about this occurance, but also stated that ALL data would
be lost if I continue. I continued with the installation without a format,
since the format (NTSF) was already applied on the partition, expecting
everthing to be overwritten. I've discovered that under the C:\Document
and Setting folder hat there are two All Users folders (All Users / All
Users.WINDOWS), two Default User folders (Default User / Default
User.WINDOWS), two LocalService folders (LocalService / LocalService.NT
AUTHORITY), and two NetworkService folders (NetworkService /
NertworkService.NT AUTHORITY). The All Users.WINDOWS folder is the one
being changed by the system as I install things.
Question: Is there any known problem with this setup, that I may
encounter, where I should do the installation process over again?

I have already put in more than a day's worth of time in patches and
software installations before realizing this.

Thank you.
B.rgds,
Kevin

You didn't do a "fresh" or clean install. It would have been better to
have formatted if you didn't want to keep the data; I always start with a
partition delete / recreate to be sure there is no trash left behind.

In this case, XP install does *not* overwrite the user account folders, it
creates new ones, named as you see. If you don't care about the old
folders, they can be deleted.

Look at the dates of the folder creations to see which ones are actually
being used.

Aside from this being a bit confusing, more typing, and longer path names,
there isn't really any problem with this.

HTH
-pk

 

[General Mailbox]

You didn't do a "fresh" or clean install. It would have been better to
have formatted if you didn't want to keep the data; I always start with a
partition delete / recreate to be sure there is no trash left behind.

In this case, XP install does *not* overwrite the user account folders,
it creates new ones, named as you see. If you don't care about the old
folders, they can be deleted.

Look at the dates of the folder creations to see which ones are actually
being used.

Aside from this being a bit confusing, more typing, and longer path names,
there isn't really any problem with this.

HTH
-pk

Thank you, Patrick.