Using XP Upgrade with a new hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I've read a bunch of posts that are similar to my question, but nothing that
nails it. Here's the situation:

I'm looking to replace a corrupt, virus infected HD with a completely new
HD. I'm not looking to save any old data, a completely fresh start! The old
HD will be tossed in the garbage. Can I use my XP Ugrade CD (the computer
came with 98 installed) as the OS on my new HD. If so, do I simply boot to
the CD at the first startup?

Thanks!
 
The short answers are yes and yes.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

The limitation is that you must be able to produce "qualifying media" during
the installation from the XP CD if you're installing on a drive with no
qualifying OS. I use a backup CD-R copy of my retail Win98 upgrade CD. (No
license code for Win98 is required for the qualification.)

The new XP installation will require activation again. The Net-based
activation will probably work. If not, use the telephone method. The
automated part of that would fail as well, and you'd be transferred to a
person. Explain that you're installing a new hard drive on the original
machine, and there should be no problem. (The total time to activate by
'phone is approx. 5 minutes.) It would also be legitimate to install XP on a
completely new PC, as a retail XP license can be transferred in compliance
with the license agreement.

HTH.

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
Jupiter Jones said:
A virus infected hard drive is no reason to replace the drive.
A Clean Installation will clean the virus off the drive:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/cleanxp.htm

You can use the Windows XP upgrade CD, you will have qualifying media
such as a Windows 98 CD.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure an upgrade (or even a full) install ever touches the
460-byte bootstrap program portion of the MBR (master boot record =
sector 0 of first physical drive found by the BIOS). If there is not
bootstrap program in the MBR then obviously the OS install has to put a
copy of its "standard bootstrap" program there, but I thought if it saw
one already there then it didn't touch the bootstrap area of the MBR.
For example, you can install Windows 98 after a Windows 2000/XP install
if you install Windows 98 into its own partition (so it overwrites the
boot sector for that partition instead of the boot sector for the
partition containing Windows 2000/XP). I don't remember the MBR
bootstrap area getting overwritten. In another case, I already have
Windows ME installed, installed BootMagic (a multiboot manager that
usurps the MBR bootstrap area), created another primary partition for
Windows 2000, made it the active primary partition (the default one
selected by BootMagic), and rebooted to that second primary partition
became C: (by using BootMagic to mark the first primary partition as
hidden). Even after the Windows 2000 install, BootMagic was still
getting loaded because the Windows 2000 didn't step on the MBR bootstrap
area. So I don't think a Windows install touches the MBR bootstrap area
if it isn't empty. I know the OS installs will overwrite the boot
sector (the first sector) in a *partition*, but I haven't heard that an
OS install overwrites the bootstrap program back in the MBR which is not
part of any partition. I agree that no virus would necessitate
discarding a perfectly physically working hard drive. There's probably
some other justification going on here, like the user really wants to
get a bigger drive and the claimed virus infection is the excuse or
subterfuge to get a bigger capacity hard drive.

The "clean" install procedure is only partition-only based. I'm not
sure it ever touches the MBR (sector 0, and actually the first track,
too) except for maybe the partition table in the MBR. If the bootstrap
code in the MBR (first 460 bytes) is infected than the infection carries
along even with a clean install of Windows.

I was thinking that maybe the user could use the 'fixmbr' command in the
Recovery Console but you cannot boot from the Windows XP install CD into
Recovery Console mode until you actually have an instance of Windows XP
installed. So my next suggestion would be to use an MS-DOS bootable
floppy (you can images from http://www.bootdisk.com/) and run 'fdisk
/mbr' to overwrite the MBR bootstrap area with a standard bootstrap
program.

It is possible for the MBR bootstrap area to get infected. That code
could then load another program in the rest of the unused first track
(which some multiboot managers do, too; I think BootIt NG does that).
That gives plenty of room for coding a virus which loads way before the
OS partition ever even gets touched (i.e., nothing of it has yet been
loaded). Since a bootstrap virus can also change the offset for the
partition table within the MBR, you would want to delete all partitions
(under the virus infected bootstrap code), overwrite the MBR bootstrap
area with a standard bootstrap program, and then create new partitions
so the partition table was at the default offset expected by the
standard bootstrap program. The reason 'fixmbr' and 'fdisk /mbr' are
dangerous is because all they do is overwrite the MBR bootstrap area
with a standard bootstrap program that looks for the partition table at
a default offset. If the virus has moved the partition table then the
standard bootstrap program cannot find the partition table and you lose
all your partitions (there are ways to recover). While I've seen these
commands work on many hosts, I've also seen them render all partitions
unusable because the partition table offset was changed (the virus knows
where to find it but not a standard bootstrap program).

I think if you want a truly clean drive and you're willing to wipe the
drive then you should probably, and in order, delete the partitions,
overwrite the MBR bootstrap area, and create a new partition table.
Otherwise, a clean install of Windows (or any OS that doesn't overwrite
the MBR bootstrap area) will still be under threat of a MBR bootstrap
virus.
 
Back
Top