Re Formating Do's & Do Not's ?

[Tonar]

Advice Please.

I want to neurollize my PC and start from scratch.

What I have:

2004-2005 AMD Athlon 3000+

1 Shiny new XP Home disk in the wrapper

1 sweet looking IL2 1946 DVD

1 fancy new TB External Hard drive

What I want to do:

Save all Important stuff (Photos, IL2, personal ....)

[JensenPark]

Ah Quazi...also known by its scientific name, Hominus Reformatus 

[Rico]

Tonar, I have a CD I burned for just such an occasion.

[Jabo]

My approach is slightly different to Rico's in that I have two HDDs in my PC, one for 'data' (the junk I collect - A bit like Rico's multitude of CD spools) and the other for 'system' files (ie windows). The advantage of this is that I can reformat the system drive any time I like without affecting the data I have on the PC. You can do this with a single drive too by partitioning it into 2 'logical' drives, and using c: for your system, and d: for your data. Obviously, whichever route you choose, you should always ensure that you have your data backed-up on a remote device (like an external hard drive) in case something major should befall your PC. For example, my airshow photos (of which there are many) are on my second drive in the PC where I can get at them quickly, on an external hard drive at home (which is not kept with the PC) and on another which I keep at my parents place, and is updated periodically.

~S~ Jabo

[T_O_A_D]

Well My 2 cents

Dual Boot

Either get another HD or partion it, if it's large enough.

I have three HD's in my system.

One of them is split into 2 partion's Front side 50 gig is my working OS for anything other than Gaming, Back side is Games, IL2,COD4, list goes on. 150 gigs of them.

Second drive front side is 15 gig for my Gaming OS just the basics,(18 processes running on fresh boot) and a few utilities for the games and hardware. Back side of that one is 97 gigs and it is My Documents, which by the way is linked to both OS, so no matter what one I'm booted up to clicking the My Documents icon takes me there.

Now the only change I'm considering is getting an external now that they are getting so cheap is to put My Documents on it, just for a more secure feeling of them being less apt to lost to

[Deputy]

I've been messing around with this formatting stuff today. The pisser is you CAN'T format the hard drive that the operating system is on if you have XP. Used to be able to drop to a DOS prompt in Win98 and format from there. No can do any more. Best way to format the hard drive is to insert the Windows installation disk and boot from it. That offers you the opportunity to format or partition.

[gec]

hey guys

i've said it many times before and will do that again.

There is no reason for you to rediscover the hot water. it is all ready discovered. we have few IT specialists like Vaca, Falcon and me that do that kind of stuff every day for leaving. if u need help, call any of us to TS and we'll help you. if u want maybe we can make a small tutorial about how to do some stuff.

but what i do not want is to explain to people that have done it once or twice to their own home computers, why i do it like that and not the other way.

we all have our ways to do things but only few of us are actually paid for it. off course we also are not all knowing so there can always be a thing that we can't solve or we learn from you. i just learned from Jabo that Win XP sp1 is not installing on PCI-e MB. i'm yet to discover why but this is what ive learned.

so if u guys need help jus give me a ring. i'm to lazy to write everything on forum all the time.

[Tonar]

OK,

Should I use something like Norton Ghost to make the complete backup to the external HD,

[Deputy]

Tonar: As long as you have WinXp on the C drive, you will NOT be able to format it by right-clicking on format. You have to reboot with an XP CD in the drive to format the hard drive.

[Tonar]

Thank you Deputy;

[Snacko]

Like Jabo, I use the two drive method.

[gec]

come to ts tonar

i'l help you

[Tonar]

Sorry Gec,

I got tied up most of the afternoon with the wife. It took me quite a while to undo her knots

[Crash]

I hope that you both enjoyed it

[B16Enk]

OK,

Should I use something like Norton Ghost to make the complete backup to the external HD,

[B16Enk]

i just learned from Jabo that Win XP sp1 is not installing on PCI-e MB. i'm yet to discover why but this is what ive learned.

Sounds like he has a SiL sata controller.

But surely he would be better placed slipstreaming SP2 or dare I say even SP3?

SlipStreaming for the masses... and it's free, if you feel adventurous you can even get the drivers for chipset and GPU included in your XP install disk

[Deputy]

Thank you for that link B16Enk!!! SP3 did a lot of things to defeat an "improper install".

[Jabo]

Possible confusion there Rog, my pre-SP1 copy of XP could not sort out my shiny new PCI-E gfx card, so I slipstreamed it with SP2 in desperation and hey presto! Everything went back to normal (still dazed and confused, but at least I could get Bill's finest installed). The next steps for me are to slipstream SP3 into the mix which will save me lots of time when I next have to do a 'Quazi' on my system (new verb for the Oxford boys there - I quazi, you quazi etc etc).

~S~ Jabo

[Stingray]

Howdy Tonar,

I don't know if this advice comes too late for your formatting adventure, but one thing I would highly recommend doing is downloading Windows XP Service Pack 2 or 3, and burning it to disk or having it on USB key and installing it right away after installing XP.

[B16Enk]

Now I am quite careful not to be on the internet at all with an unpatched windows xp machine, and will go as far as unplugging the internet connection until windows xp sp2 or sp3 is installed.

hey Stingray, do yourself a favour and get nLite linked in my post above, then you can have SP2 or SP3 from the get-go

It is easy and will only cost you a CD and half an hour or so of your time.

[Snacko]

I am trying to create a XP Pro SP2 install from my original XP Pro DVD using nLite.

[B16Enk]

I'm downloading my MSDN/Technet XP Pro iso, and will create a zipped file of those two directories.

Can you confirm it is Pre SP1 you are working with?

Also you folder should look like this:

[Snacko]

Yes, I think so.

[B16Enk]

I have put a zip file in the vault, 20Mb, of the two directories.

This is from an SP3 disk though, but as far as I can tell they are not modified by service packs 9but i am willing to admit I may be wrong).

Grab it from here

[B16Enk]

If you are missing any of the boot stuff, from the root of the disk, I can upload that too.

But not the whole disk