Rebuild system after drive crash

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Guest

I need to rebuild my system (XP Pro SP2) after a disk failure. I have normal
backups of everything (excluding System Volume Information and RECYCLER
directories) on DVD made with the Windows Backup Utility, including the
system state.

Will these steps restore my original setup?
1. Install new disk as master on primary IDE.
2. Boot with Windows installation CD and perform a minimal clean install.
3. Run the backup utility and restore the whole system using the "Always
replace the file on my computer" restore option.
4. Restore the System State last.

Will the Windows installation CD provide the tools to partition and format
the new disk?

Does it matter that the Windows installation CD is SP1? If steps 3 and 4
update all the system files and system state, will I be back to my pre-crash
condition (SP2) when I finish?

Will the restore function of the Windows backup utility overwrite system
files without any problems if I am in an administrator account, or is there
some option I need to set to "unprotect" them?

Does it matter that the System Volume Information was not backed-up (I know
I won't have any restore points). The clean install should initialise the
System Restore architecture so that the utility is usable, right?

Should I turn off the System Restore function to the Windows disk before I
do steps 3 and 4, to avoid saving all those changes as a massive (and
essentially redundant) restore point?

Thanks in advance for any answers you may be able to provide...
 
Will the Windows installation CD provide the tools to partition and format
the new disk?
Click to expand...

Yes to the above. If you do a full reformat and a new install you should not have any concerns .Install XP SP1 and when done immediately install SP2. Then go to Windows Update and install what it shows there. After you are all set and then install everything else that you have (3rd part software). I as a force of habit would do a Defrag of the system between each of the steps above
 
Peter said:
Yes to the above. If you do a full reformat and a new install you should not have any concerns .Install XP SP1 and when done immediately install SP2. Then go to Windows Update and install what it shows there. After you are all set and then install everything else that you have (3rd part software). I as a force of habit would do a Defrag of the system between each of the steps above
Click to expand...

He will have to activate before downloading from Windows Update. Being
as his version includes SP2, there's no need to install SP1 or SP2 again.

Alias
 
Does it matter that the Windows installation CD is SP1?

Read his post again. His installation CD is XP SP1. He NOW has SP2 already on his system and he wants to reformat. He needs to add SP2 after reformatting with his XP SP1
 
Peter said:
Read his post again. His installation CD is XP SP1. He NOW has SP2 already on his system and he wants to reformat. He needs to add SP2 after reformatting with his XP SP1
Click to expand...

OK, sorry, I responded too quickly.

Alias
 
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