reinstall xp

[Dan @ Jacque]

Can I do a clean install with an upgrade version of windows xp? I know I was
able to do one with windows 95 many years ago. Does anybody have any ideas
on this. I want to format my hard drive and all I have is an upgrade xp.
Thanks for any help.

 

[Mark Adams]

Can I do a clean install with an upgrade version of windows xp? I know I was
able to do one with windows 95 many years ago. Does anybody have any ideas
on this. I want to format my hard drive and all I have is an upgrade xp.
Thanks for any help.

Yes, you can clean install. Go to the website of the maker of your hard
drive. Download the formating tools for your model hard drive, make a
bootable CD from the download. Use the tool to partition and format (choose
NTFS) the drive. Put in the XP CD and install on the formatted partition you
just made. Use the product key that came with the upgrade CD. The install
will ask for a qualifying prior version of windows CD. When prompted, insert
a Win 95, 98, ME or even a XP OEM CD. The install will then prompt you to
reinsert the Windows XP CD and the install will proceed. Works very smoothly
as long as you have the qualifying media.

 

[Malke]

Yes, you can clean install. Go to the website of the maker of your hard
drive. Download the formating tools for your model hard drive, make a
bootable CD from the download. Use the tool to partition and format
(choose NTFS) the drive. Put in the XP CD and install on the formatted
partition you just made. Use the product key that came with the upgrade
CD. The install will ask for a qualifying prior version of windows CD.
When prompted, insert a Win 95, 98, ME or even a XP OEM CD. The install
will then prompt you to reinsert the Windows XP CD and the install will
proceed. Works very smoothly as long as you have the qualifying media.

Not necessary to do all that work. The OP can simply boot from the XP
install CD, provide his older OS disk when prompted, and do the
deletion/creation/formatting of partitions from within the XP installation
routine.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows - What
you will need on-hand

Malke

 

[Big_Al]

Mark Adams said this on 1/6/2009 10:11 AM:

Yes, you can clean install. Go to the website of the maker of your hard
drive. Download the formating tools for your model hard drive, make a
bootable CD from the download. Use the tool to partition and format (choose
NTFS) the drive. Put in the XP CD and install on the formatted partition you
just made. Use the product key that came with the upgrade CD. The install
will ask for a qualifying prior version of windows CD. When prompted, insert
a Win 95, 98, ME or even a XP OEM CD. The install will then prompt you to
reinsert the Windows XP CD and the install will proceed. Works very smoothly
as long as you have the qualifying media.

If the OP has another win95 etc CD, this is great.
If "and all I have is an upgrade xp" means he has no other CD's, this
won't work.

If I recall correctly, during the install of XP you can format the
drive, without the formatting tools from the drive vendor.

 

[Mark Adams]

Mark Adams said this on 1/6/2009 10:11 AM:

If the OP has another win95 etc CD, this is great.
If "and all I have is an upgrade xp" means he has no other CD's, this
won't work.

If I recall correctly, during the install of XP you can format the
drive, without the formatting tools from the drive vendor.

If you have a large drive to format, using the XP disk may take most of an
hour sometimes; to complete the format. The tools from the hard drive
manufacturer take just a few seconds or minutes. You can download the tool,
create the bootable media, and format the drive in less time than than the XP
disk takes to do the format. You now have the bootable media for future use
for free. Your mileage may vary, but for me XP's format is always WAAAAY
slower for some reason.

 

[Alias]

If you have a large drive to format, using the XP disk may take most of an
hour sometimes; to complete the format. The tools from the hard drive
manufacturer take just a few seconds or minutes. You can download the tool,
create the bootable media, and format the drive in less time than than the XP
disk takes to do the format. You now have the bootable media for future use
for free. Your mileage may vary, but for me XP's format is always WAAAAY
slower for some reason.

Not to mention the fact that if one wants a dual boot, say XP and
Ubuntu, the CD is far superior.

Alias

 

[John John (MVP)]

:



If you have a large drive to format, using the XP disk may take most of an
hour sometimes; to complete the format. The tools from the hard drive
manufacturer take just a few seconds or minutes. You can download the tool,
create the bootable media, and format the drive in less time than than the XP
disk takes to do the format. You now have the bootable media for future use
for free. Your mileage may vary, but for me XP's format is always WAAAAY
slower for some reason.

If you want to format FAT32 other non-Microsoft tools will do the job
just fine but if you want to use the preferred NTFS file system you are
better off using the Windows XP utilities. The proprietary nature of
the NTFS file system along with the revisions introduced in almost each
new Windows version makes most of these third party tools less than
reliable at handling the task. Not many third party companies hold
license to provide NTFS formatting utilities, the only one that I can
think of which /may/ be licensed is Paragon.

John

 

[Mark Adams]

If you want to format FAT32 other non-Microsoft tools will do the job
just fine but if you want to use the preferred NTFS file system you are
better off using the Windows XP utilities. The proprietary nature of
the NTFS file system along with the revisions introduced in almost each
new Windows version makes most of these third party tools less than
reliable at handling the task. Not many third party companies hold
license to provide NTFS formatting utilities, the only one that I can
think of which /may/ be licensed is Paragon.

John

Gee, you learn something new every day. I've used Maxblast, Diskwizard, and
Lifeguard for Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital hard drives and all of
them can format FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. They can also make separate partitions
of differing formats so "Alias" can dual boot. They can clone your old hard
drive to a new one of the appropriate make. Maxblast even works for those old
Quantum Fireball disks in older machines. I've used all of these and I've
never had any formating trouble with any of these utilities, and they are
free. Hitachi and Toshiba probably have similar utilities as well. One
advantage the XP disk has is that it will format anybody's hard drive, which
the others will not.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Can I do a clean install with an upgrade version of windows xp? I know I was
able to do one with windows 95 many years ago. Does anybody have any ideas
on this. I want to format my hard drive and all I have is an upgrade xp.
Thanks for any help.

Yes, if you own a previous qualifying version of Windows.

The requirement to use an upgrade version is to *own* a previous
qualifying version's installation CD (with an OEM restore CD, see
below), not to have it installed. When setup doesn't find a previous
qualifying version installed, it will prompt you to insert its CD as
proof of ownership. Just insert the previous version's CD, and follow
the prompts. Everything proceeds quite normally and quite
legitimately.

You can also do a clean installation if you have an OEM restore CD of
a previous qualifying version. It's more complicated, but it *can* be
done. First restore from the Restore CD. Then run the XP upgrade CD
from within that restored system, and change from Upgrade to New
Install. When it asks where, press Esc to delete the partition and
start over

 

[Alias]

... the XP disk has is that it will format anybody's hard drive, which
the others will not.

Hence the moniker: Micro$lut. I haven't had any problem with Seagate and
Maxtor utilities either, be it the old floppies or the new CDs.

Alias

 

[John John (MVP)]

:



Gee, you learn something new every day. I've used Maxblast, Diskwizard, and
Lifeguard for Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital hard drives and all of
them can format FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. They can also make separate partitions
of differing formats so "Alias" can dual boot. They can clone your old hard
drive to a new one of the appropriate make. Maxblast even works for those old
Quantum Fireball disks in older machines. I've used all of these and I've
never had any formating trouble with any of these utilities, and they are
free. Hitachi and Toshiba probably have similar utilities as well. One
advantage the XP disk has is that it will format anybody's hard drive, which
the others will not.

In which case you wouldn't really know if your drive was formatted to
NTFS 3.0 or NTFS 3.1 and you wouldn't know whether or not the extra
metadata files created on an NTFS 3.1 formated disk are present or not.
Later on this may come back to haunt the user and it may cause
problems if a fix or new feature is intended to make use of these
metadata files. This is something that Vista users are beginning to see
when they sometimes have used non Microsoft tools to format their drives
NTFS.

John

 

[Ian D]

Can I do a clean install with an upgrade version of windows xp? I know I
was able to do one with windows 95 many years ago. Does anybody have any
ideas on this. I want to format my hard drive and all I have is an
upgrade xp. Thanks for any help.

If you still have XP installed, start the upgrade installation and
it will qualify. Then, when given the installation options, choose
to format the partition, and do the clean install.

 

[Dan @ Jacque]

Thank you all for your help!

Dan

If you still have XP installed, start the upgrade installation and
it will qualify. Then, when given the installation options, choose
to format the partition, and do the clean install.

 

[Mark Adams]

In which case you wouldn't really know if your drive was formatted to
NTFS 3.0 or NTFS 3.1 and you wouldn't know whether or not the extra
metadata files created on an NTFS 3.1 formated disk are present or not.
Later on this may come back to haunt the user and it may cause
problems if a fix or new feature is intended to make use of these
metadata files. This is something that Vista users are beginning to see
when they sometimes have used non Microsoft tools to format their drives
NTFS.

John

Hmm. How WOULD you know which version of NTFS you are installing, or already
have installed? I don't recall any reference to this during the install, even
for Vista. Once installed, Local Disk properties only shows "NTFS" with no
version. I'm certainly a rank amateur when it comes to the inner workings of
Windows; I'm adding my 2 cents when I know something has worked for me every
time without fail. I used the Seagate utility to format NTFS for my 64 bit
Vista Home Premium install, and so far, so good; but i don't have a clue what
NTFS version it is. Like I said you learn something every day.

 

[John John (MVP)]

:



Hmm. How WOULD you know which version of NTFS you are installing, or already
have installed?

I know because I always use the operating system to format my drives.
Otherwise you can use the "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo" command, but be aware
that when a Windows operating system mounts an NTFS disk it will
automatically convert an older NTFS version disk to the version it uses,
so the ntfsinfo command may not tell the whole story. For example, if
you mount a Windows 2000 disk (NTFS 3.0) in a Windows XP machine,
without warning or consent the disk will automatically be converted to
NTFS 3.1, but as far as I know it will not create the new (extra)
metadata files when it converts the disk.

I'm not saying that you will *absolutely* run into problems if you use
other utilities to format your disk, but there are some known problems
when different NTFS versions are used, for example, when XP came out a
lot of partition imaging tools couldn't deal with the newer NTFS 3.1.
If you ever have a multipartion disk with different NTFS versions on it
you may find that your partitioning tools might not be able to merge the
different partitions. And if ever a fix or new feature for Windows XP
or Vista is intended to use the extra features on a a newer NTFS version
released with the operating system it may cause bugs or problems that
may baffle even the most seasoned user, if at all possible I prefer to
avoid these kinds of obscure problems.

John