Ghosts

BruceY

I believe my problems I've been experiencing where due to buggy install of XP that didnt complete. I dont know at this point what caused it. Now the MS tech had to take back the OS cd. SO I went back to my Win2K pro ,as stated in previous posts. I think I've had to reinstall Win2k 3 times since 3 weeks ago for one reason or another. talk about frustration :bawling: . Today I thought of something to be the cause. WinXP GHOSTS. Something was left behind that even re-partitioning did not get rid of. Two possibilities come to mind also, 1) I should have done a "FDISK /MBR", which I didnt, And 2) I put 4 hard drives in I had. The last one being a 6gig , now I think of questionable age/quality. I had gotten it out of a company pc that may have been 4-5 years old. Event Viewer said at one point there was a problem with drive #4, the 6gig. OUT IT CAME TODAY !! Adding insult to injury, I went to install Norton AV 2005 last night. It installed fine on my other pc. I kept getting errors on this pc. I found that I had written on the envelope while the cd was in it. resulting in something about XP being imprinted on the data side of the cd. Hoping I can clean it
One other point I hope someone can help. When my Win2k boots up with a ATA100 drive hooked to a UIDE cable and mobo, it hangs for up to 90 seconds part way thru the boot up. When I have the same drive on a std ribbon cable and std IDE mobo connector, it boots up FAST, no hang ups. I'm thinking the High Point HPT370 driver was affected by voodoo xp majic. recall no fdisk /mbr done?
Considering my options,

BruceY

If I were to purchase XP, I am aware of minor differences in Home ed and Pro ed. What would you recomend?

Zuntar

IMO, unless you are going to do some hosting or bigtime network stuff, I'd just get home ed.

I have both, and there isn't anything that I can't do with the home ed that I can do with Pro. I do have a home network.

rapture

The main difference I found is that Pro is a little easier to configure as you have access to the same kinds of tools that were in Win2k. You may have to play around with the registry to make system changes if you were to buy Home.

If you dont tweak or play around with your system then you wont see any difference.

yagga

I would "should" get home, but since I like the best I personally would get Pro even though it probably has no real use to me. Did that sound right?

BruceY

I think I'll go with Pro, not too much difference in cost. By the way, Last night I saw a banner add at the top here that had WinXP Pro for $50 after $129 off????? Cant be true?????????????????

primesuspect

the primary differences between pro and home:

pro can join active directory domains. Home cannot

Pro supports multiple processors. Home does not.

kryyst

Pro sounds better.

Spyrious

A little off topic (?) but wat exactly does the command fdisk /mbr?

kryyst

that command erases your Master Boot Record. A few viruses given the chance like to locate there and some boot loaders used to multi-boot different OS's like to live there. Linux for example uses Grub or LiLo to boot it's OS. So if you are just using windows and are not booting anything odd to multi-boot between different OS's then fdisk /mbr won't harm anything.

BruceY

When ever you want to do a TOTALY CLEAN INSTALL, not only fdisk the drive which blows away partitions ( and 100% of nasty stuff), as long as your drive is in good shape with no bad sectors, ALSO do a fdisk /MBR (dont have to be caps) to erase anything not wanted on the boot record be it references to the previous OS or nastys hiding there.
I usualy boot up with a Win98se boot disk that has the fdisk command. At the "A" prompt type "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotations) , Wait till the "A" prompt comes back then type "fdisk" to erase the partitions and create new. The updated Win98se boot supports larger drives. Its worked for me

Hawk

Here's a link that explains the differences between home & pro..... for those of you with inquiring minds.... Comparison Guide