Installing XP

[desooper]

I would like to know if I take my windows XP disk and put into my machine and click on INSTALL WINDOWS will this just go over my current windows or will this have me reformat first, thank you for all your help. By the way I am running a Dell 2.4 with 1G or ram, Thanks

[Madball]

You can really do both. Its up to you. The cd will ask you if you want to do a full install or repair your current installation. A system repair works good if you don't want to lose any information currently or personal settings you currently have. A full install will take you throught the reformating process and then install from a clean slate. Both work good in there own respects.

[desooper]

You can really do both. Its up to you. The cd will ask you if you want to do a full install or repair your current installation. A system repair works good if you don't want to lose any information currently or personal settings you currently have. A full install will take you throught the reformating process and then install from a clean slate. Both work good in there own respects.

Is there anyway to reinstall windows with reformatting and without doing a repair, I need to reinstall windows as I know the repair just fixes files that might be corruct or something I was just wondering if there is anyway do do it over but with out reformatting. Thanks for your help.

[Madball]

Yes, like I said, do a full install. It will reformat your drive and then reinstall. Very painless to install. The pain starts when you have to reinstall all updates and software.

[DanG]

If it's a dell, it probably comes with a restore cd and I doubt it will let you do a repair anyways.

[mmonnin]

He asked w/o doing a reformat.

A repair will fix almost anything. Just make sure to burn anything you have on that drive like Favorites, downloads, saved documents.

Hmm just noticed you have a Dell. Did they give you a XP backup disk or do you have a full copy of XP not from dell?

[desooper]

He asked w/o doing a reformat.

A repair will fix almost anything. Just make sure to burn anything you have on that drive like Favorites, downloads, saved documents.

Hmm just noticed you have a Dell. Did they give you a XP backup disk or do you have a full copy of XP not from dell?

I have the back-up from Dell NOT full version.

[Straight_Man]

Problem you have is this, right??? You want your data, but you want only what came with the XP install.... Best thing to do is backup what you really need, then do a full install, then recover, if you have lots of junk and do not know how to fix a big program mess. The Repair install, and most Dells will let you do one, BTW (exceptions are those designed to be network managed, those may need to do a repair install over a network), will in essence check for what is on install image and replace stuff that is bad versus install. It is designed to leave things more recent, except for cases where a virus has deleted or renamed system files, then the system files will be replaced with stuff from the CD or HD image.

So, question becomes, can you run XP enough to make and copy data to a separate partition, then reinstall full without wiping partition, then proceed to recover data from your copy??? Did you try this already, and if so what happened???

No, usually if you do a full install you do get to end up with a clean install on a formatted partition, BUT, it is possible not to format whole HD if you have a full XP installer-- and still have what you copied to another partition. There are also ways in XP to handle a lot of problems, so an explanation of why you want to do what you want to do, as best as you can explain, might save you from doing this-- some of the folks here know how to recover what might seem to be royal messes.... :D And some of us like problem puzzles, keeps our minds up to date on how best to solve things for money elsewhere....

John.

[desooper]

Problem you have is this, right??? You want your data, but you want only what came with the XP install.... Best thing to do is backup what you really need, then do a full install, then recover, if you have lots of junk and do not know how to fix a big program mess. The Repair install, and most Dells will let you do one, BTW (exceptions are those designed to be network managed, those may need to do a repair install over a network), will in essence check for what is on install image and replace stuff that is bad versus install. It is designed to leave things more recent, except for cases where a virus has deleted or renamed system files, then the system files will be replaced with stuff from the CD or HD image.

So, question becomes, can you run XP enough to make and copy data to a separate partition, then reinstall full without wiping partition, then proceed to recover data from your copy??? Did you try this already, and if so what happened???

No, usually if you do a full install you do get to end up with a clean install on a formatted partition, BUT, it is possible not to format whole HD if you have a full XP installer-- and still have what you copied to another partition. There are also ways in XP to handle a lot of problems, so an explanation of why you want to do what you want to do, as best as you can explain, might save you from doing this-- some of the folks here know how to recover what might seem to be royal messes.... :D And some of us like problem puzzles, keeps our minds up to date on how best to solve things for money elsewhere....

John.ok here goes, I have run this before on here and everything I have tried did NOT work, but here is my problem. I go to START, click on MY COMPUTER, this opens a new window with all my drives, C, D, E, ect. I then RIGHT CLICK on ANY of these and then CLICK ON THE PROPERTIES and do anything in properties box, and this is where it goes bad, when I CLOSE OUT PROPERTIES,then WINDOW to MY COMPUTER, my computer freezes, ALL but the mouse, I can not click or do anything from here on out except for CTRL, ALT, DELETE to restart., I have tried to do a windows repair, I have tried to do a C+A+D and click on new task and type in Explorer, I have disabled the MS Office in NAV, by the way I do Norton, Zone alarm and ALL are up to date. I even tried to reinstall IE ( Internet Explorer), ALL of this has been done and NONE of it has worked, So I ask if you can help me out PLEASE do I am willing to try anything, Thank you for all your help and Time. I am avoiding a reformat.

[Madball]

search for spyware. I use Adaware, but Spybot Search and Destroy is also good. Run these to clean out any unwanted programs you are unaware off. How long have you had this current install of Windows? It may just be time for a reformat.