Installation Problems

[Pete McRae]

I am having problems wirh Internet Explorer & Outlook
express on my new XP Home installation. I requested a
clean install on my AMD XP100+ system, has 256meg ram and
a 40 gig drive with a MSI K7N420Pro motherboad.

The internet explored constently crashes when I am
navigating web page and occasionaly crashes naviagting an
outlook express documnet. There are no apparent problems
using Netscape.

I think the system may have some corputed files in my
system. If I do a FDISK vommand from the DOS level, will
I be able to boot from a XP HOME full edition cd? I have
not been able to find out how to create a Disaster
recovery floppy for XP, if there is one.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[Gerry]

If your bios will support booting from your CD Rom, you
shouldn't have any problems. Make sure you back up any
critical data before running FDISK.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Pete.

You should not need FDISK or that DOS boot floppy at all! They can be used,
but...

Everything you need is on the retail WinXP CD-ROM, either Home or
Professional Edition. Just set your computer BIOS to boot from CD. Insert
the WinXP CD and reboot. Among the first screens you will see is the option
to delete the existing partition and create (and format) a new one. This is
what FDISK (and Format.com) did when we were using MS-DOS/Win9x/ME. After
the initial partition created during Setup, use Disk Management to create
(and delete) and format any others that you need. Deleting or reformatting
the partition will, of course, wipe out everything there, so you might want
to try a couple of other things first...

To find and fix corrupted operating system files in WinXP, run the System
File Checker. On the Run line, enter: sfc /scannow

SFC will compare each WinXP file with the "known good" copy held in your
on-disk cache and replace any missing or damaged ones. Have your WinXP
CD-ROM handy; SFC probably will need to see that.

If SFC doesn't do the job, you may need to do what Microsoft calls an
"in-place upgrade". See this KB article for details (Use Method 2 and press
Enter in Step 3, then R in Step 5.):
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341

This will re-install WinXP itself, while leaving your installed applications
and data intact. And it will take about as long as a clean install.
Afterwards, be sure your firewall and antivirus are working again, then go
online to Windows Update to be sure you have the latest Service Pack and
other updates to protect your computer from viruses and other malware.

I have
not been able to find out how to create a Disaster
recovery floppy for XP, if there is one.

No, you don't need to create a recovery floppy. The WinXP CD-ROM is
bootable and has the tools to fix the MBR, boot sector and other such
critical items.

RC

 

[Dave]

Try a 'repair install' from the CD first.