Guide For Doing A Clean Re-install of XP-Home?

[Pegleg]

I'm sure after the years XP has been in use their are some caveats about
or preferred steps to follow when formatting a drive and doing the
re-install. I want to do a clean install on my 3 yr old Gateway Laptop
to clean out all the crap! Have all my disks and have reformatted
drives before.

So, if there are some pointers folks recommend I would love to read
them.

TIA


U.S. Navy Retired
Support Our Troops,
Question The Policy!

All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Sir Winston Churchill

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary
to partition and format your drive. Follow this procedure and allow
Windows XP to partition and format your drive:

NOTE: It would be best to physically disconnect all your peripheral hardware
devices, except the monitor, mouse and keyboard, before installing XP.

NOTE: If you have an internal Zip Drive installed, physically disconnect the
EIDE and power cable to it before proceeding, otherwise your main
hard drive may not be assigned the customary C: drive letter.
After installing Windows XP, you may then reconnect it.

1. Open your BIOS and set your "CD Drive as the first bootable device".

===> Accessing Motherboard BIOS
===> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

2. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your computer.
3. You'll see a message to boot to the CD....follow the instructions.
4. The setup menu will appear and you should elect to delete all the existing
Windows partitions, then create a new partition, then format the primary
partition (preferably NTFS) and proceed to install Windows XP.

5. Clean Install Windows XP
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

[Courtesy of Michael Stevens, MS-MVP]

6. ==> Immediately after installing Windows XP, make sure XP's Firewall is enabled:
==> http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxpsp2/Default.mspx

7. After Windows XP is installed, visit the Windows Update website
and download the available "Critical Updates".

8. After installing the critical updates, be sure and visit the support website
of the manufacturer of the computer to download and install any
available Windows XP compatible drivers, such as video adapter
and audio drivers.

9. If you happen to run into any installation difficulties, use the following resources:

How to Troubleshoot Windows XP Problems During Installation
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310064

Troubleshooting Windows XP Setup
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----------------

:

| I'm sure after the years XP has been in use their are some caveats about
| or preferred steps to follow when formatting a drive and doing the
| re-install. I want to do a clean install on my 3 yr old Gateway Laptop
| to clean out all the crap! Have all my disks and have reformatted
| drives before.
|
| So, if there are some pointers folks recommend I would love to read
| them.
|
| TIA
|
|
| U.S. Navy Retired
| Support Our Troops,
| Question The Policy!
|
| All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words:
| freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
| Sir Winston Churchill

 

[Pegleg]

The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary
to partition and format your drive. Follow this procedure and allow
Windows XP to partition and format your drive:

9. If you happen to run into any installation difficulties, use the following resources:

How to Troubleshoot Windows XP Problems During Installation
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310064

Troubleshooting Windows XP Setup
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

Thanks very much Kelly!


U.S. Navy Retired
Support Our Troops,
Question The Policy!

All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Sir Winston Churchill

 

[JimBob]

Hi Pegleg,
From one navy retired to another here is the easiest way I have found to
format and reinstall without having problems.

To format drive C and clean reinstall Windows XP with the XP CD assuming
only one OS is installed:
a. Place XP CD in CD-ROM drive and prevent auto start by holding down
shift key.
b. Select Start\shutdown\restart.
c. Press spacebar when asked to press any key to boot from CD.
d. CD boots and installs various files then asks if you want to
install or recover. Press R to recover.
e. In recovery console type 1 and press enter.
f. You will be required to enter the administrative password that was
created during the previous XP installation and press enter.
g. Now type "format c: /fs:ntfs" without Quotes and press enter.
(If c: is not the drive you want to format replace with letter of
drive you do want to format. If fat32 was desired replace ntfs
with fat32)
h. Press Y and enter (to allow format).
i. After format type exit to quit recovery console and restart
computer.
j. Boot again from CD and select install. Follow prompts to install
OS.
k. Do not select to reboot from CD during the several restarts during
install.

 

[Anna]

Hi Pegleg,
From one navy retired to another here is the easiest way I have found to
format and reinstall without having problems.

To format drive C and clean reinstall Windows XP with the XP CD assuming
only one OS is installed:
a. Place XP CD in CD-ROM drive and prevent auto start by holding down
shift key.
b. Select Start\shutdown\restart.
c. Press spacebar when asked to press any key to boot from CD.
d. CD boots and installs various files then asks if you want to
install or recover. Press R to recover.
e. In recovery console type 1 and press enter.
f. You will be required to enter the administrative password that was
created during the previous XP installation and press enter.
g. Now type "format c: /fs:ntfs" without Quotes and press enter.
(If c: is not the drive you want to format replace with letter
of
drive you do want to format. If fat32 was desired replace ntfs
with fat32)
h. Press Y and enter (to allow format).
i. After format type exit to quit recovery console and restart
computer.
j. Boot again from CD and select install. Follow prompts to install
OS.
k. Do not select to reboot from CD during the several restarts during
install.

JimBob:
Have you run into problems just using the XP installation CD to simply
partition and/or format the HD and then installing the OS? Have you found
some advantage in first formatting the drive through the Recovery Console
and *then* going through the install process?

I ask the question because we have performed fresh installs of the XP OS on
a few hundred machines without problems and have never had to use the
process you describe except in a few cases where we first had to "zero out"
the HD because of some drive overlay program that had been previously
installed on the drive. And, of course, in those cases we used a DOS bootup
disk with the required program to undertake that process. A very rare
instance to be sure.
Anna

 

[JimBob]

JimBob:
Have you run into problems just using the XP installation CD to simply
partition and/or format the HD and then installing the OS? Have you found
some advantage in first formatting the drive through the Recovery Console
and *then* going through the install process?

I ask the question because we have performed fresh installs of the XP OS
on a few hundred machines without problems and have never had to use the
process you describe except in a few cases where we first had to "zero
out" the HD because of some drive overlay program that had been previously
installed on the drive. And, of course, in those cases we used a DOS
bootup disk with the required program to undertake that process. A very
rare instance to be sure.
Anna

Hi Anna,
When I first tried formatting and reinstalling XP from the XP CD I thought I
had correctly set it up to format the C drive and go ahead and install. The
problem was after it was installed I had XP on the C drive and on the D
drive. I thought I had been very careful following the instructions but I
must have messed up somehow. Anyway during my newsgroup meandering I came
across installing XP as I have described. It seemed very simple and worked
perfectly so when people have trouble I just simply suggest it.