Reinstalling Windows XP

[Peter Wilkins]

My Toshiba P20 Pentium4 XPPro laptop has seen very hard use over a
couple of years with many programs installed, uninstalled and
reinstalled and it's getting very slow and just a bit unstable, and has
started switching itself off occasionally for no apparent reason. I've
tried all the usual remedies, but it's not been much help.

I thought that I would start again clean, but found that I can't do a
clean install or repair of WinXP as Toshiba in their wisdom didn't give
me a WinXP disk - just a set of 3 Restore CD's (based on Drive Image I
think) that when used will delete everything on my system and restore it
to the date that I bought it including XPPro (pre-SP1 and SP2 I think),
Toshiba utilities and quite a few junk programs that I have never used.

So my basic question is:
a. should I just reinstate the laptop to pristine condition using the
Toshiba restore CDs then reinstall everything, after getting Win XP back
up to scratch, or
b. even though I have a licenced copy on the laptop, is it worth forking
out for a new WinXP CD (already including SP2 I hope), as the time saved
in getting XP up-to-date could justify the expense? or
c. chicken out and leave it as it is!

I'm a bit concerned that Toshiba may have a few funny tweaks to XP that
I may not be able to install using a new standard XP CD. (eg - clicking
on Help & Support currently brings up a Toshiba version). They have done
that with the nVidia drivers so I cant update them. Also, I might have
re-activation problems with MS if I use the Toshiba restore disks.

I have full data backups on an external HDD and DVD's, but am concerned
I might miss some of the more esoteric settings, and may not be able to
find some of the product keys (where the hell did I put those bloody
boxes?), but that's par for the course. Does anyone have any
information that would help with the best procedure, or can point me to
a web site or other info that might help? I have been reading detail on
a site: www.windowsreinstall.com/ which has been helpful but doesn't
address the Toshiba specific issues. I also checked
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp but it indicated that my
problems were just annoying, not yet unbearable, so perhaps I should
stick with the current install for another year and then just junk the
whole computer - it is nearly 3 years old after all!

Any advice on the way to go, info or URLs would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Pete,

Do a search on the net for a program called REG CLEAN, it is not realy
supported by XP however it works. I use it on my laptop all the time when I
make changed to the programs on the HD. This gets rid of the stuff left over
from previous load, ect.

 

[Peter Wilkins]

Pete,

Do a search on the net for a program called REG CLEAN, it is not realy
supported by XP however it works. I use it on my laptop all the time when I
make changed to the programs on the HD. This gets rid of the stuff left over
from previous load, ect.

Thanks Dave, I have used Regclean in the past, but I think it's a bit
dangerous now and MS has officially withdrawn it. I do use Registry
Healer, which doesn't just find and delete faulty registry entries, it
searches for and suggests corrections if they can be found (sometimes it
finds too many!). I've also tried EasyCleaner and RegSeeker, but I tend
not to delete an entry if I don't understand it. I'm not sure that
registry cleaners are the way to go anyway - even using them I find my
registry remains very bloated, and my computer as slow as an old boot.