Hey, Dopers, I’m hoping someone will be able to help me out with this… my limited Google skills have failed me so far.
I’m trying to do a reinstall of Windows XP on my laptop. That is, I’m currently running XP, but I want to start over. I got to the step in which I select the hard disk for the install. The picture for step 6 on thisMS support website shows only “Unpartitioned Space” as an option for this step, but my computer shows my C: drive as “Partition1” with a large portion of space taken up because that’s the drive that I have XP on now. Next is a small 8MB unpartitioned space, and then my E: drive (CD/DVD burner) as “Partition2.” I want to install XP on my C: drive, but when I select that option, it tells me that I already have an OS on that partition, which I obviously do, and that installing XP on that drive may cause the other OS to work improperly. It gives me the option to continue the install on that partition using C or go back and select another one using the Esc key.
My question is this: if I hit C to go ahead with the installation on my C: drive, will I have 2 copies of the same operating system on that drive, or will it give me the option to erase everything on the drive before continuing? That’s what I’m going for: I’d like to erase everything on my computer and get it back to the state it was in when I bought it new.
ETA: I know the site I linked says in step 5 that selecting the drive will erase everything, but I’m just asking here to make sure that’s actually the case becsause my setup screen is different from their examples. Sorry, I’m a computer novice!
If you are ok with losing the current contents of C: then the normal step here is to delete the c partition.
In other words you could delete all your partitions, make a new (single) partition that uses all available space. then install xp on that.
BUT ONLY IF YOU DON’T MIND LOSING EVERYTHING CURRENTLY ON YOUR HARD DISK.
I can’t remember what the key is to delete the partition, but it should be showing you somewhere on the screen. I think it’s ‘D’ or a number.
eta: All the facilities for deleting and making new partitions should be available to you in the place you are. You don’t need to ‘go somewhere else’ to do that stuff.
That’s true. But the OP wants to ‘start over’. I strongly recommend that when you want a ‘fresh’ ‘clean’ install you start with a blank slate. Or a blank (formatted unpartitioned) hard drive.
So you load up your xp cd.
delete primary partition (and any others if you don’t want them)
create a new partition using available space.
Install.
ETA1:OP: FOR OG SAKE make sure you have your windows serial key to hand. Probably on a sticker underneath your laptop.
ETA2: And be prepared to spend several hours doing updates once the bare bones of xp is installed.
ETA3: It’s all worth it in the end. Nothing quite like a ‘fresh’ computer.
Also if you do not have a driver disk that came with the PC you may wish to either try to backup or preserve a driver folder if there is one (many OEM’s do this).
That way you can reload at least your network drivers so you can get back online to ask us for more help.
You will occasionally see those little 8mb of wasted space, no biggie, thats 8 out of 80,000 on an 80GB hard drive.
First let me say I’m not a computer expert so any observations made are just from personal experience.
I can’t open your link picture so am flying a bit blind.
Be sure you have your Windows serial key handy.
As “HorseloverFat” said you can do a repair install, but don’t choose the first option for repair wait till after the license agreement screen when you should get a list of drives on your system with the option of overwriting your existing system, repair or exit. If you choose repair you will get fairly clean install without loosing any of your data.
If you want to do a clean install, be sure you have your documents photos and any other stuff saved somewhere else, then the best option is to format the whole disk before reloading windows.
Go to the HD manufacturers Webpage and down load something called “Disk Manager” or something similar, they all have them and burn this to CD.
Boot the with the “Disk Manager” CD and choose format whole disk, this will give you a totally clean HD on which to install your windows.
Well, I’m a little embarrassed… in my OP I mentioned that my skills with Google had failed me. But I saw y’all’s suggestion to format the hard drive, wondered what the exact steps were for that, Googled it, and what was the very first link that came up? A super-useful LifeHacker page that got me all the way through the new install! So thank you, Dopers, for inspiring the Google search I needed to solve this!
Actually, in order to format the hard drive, all you do is delete your existing partitions, just like **Lobsang **said. I guess I thought there would be more steps to it, but I got everything taken care of last night. So thanks again!
WindowsXP contains a perfectly usable utility that will partition and format the drives as part of a clean install.
I am a computer expert of sorts, your post is leading the OP to hunt for software (like western digital datalifeguard or seatools) that will most likely create more confusion than help. Like a certain ex poster who liked to post in medical threads all the time you may wish to reconsider posting anecdotal advice on computer repair issues when there is a fairly solid contingent of IT types here who are more than happy to help.
Thank you " drachillix" for your expert and frank opinion on my post. It’s always good when an expert comes along and gives advice, unfortunately sometimes the experts though attempting talking down still manage to be confuse some of us mere mortals.
One poster made the point of doing a repair install but failed to mention that if the first repair option was chosen all data would be lost. Apologies to that poster but not every one is aware that there is a second option for repair that will save the data.
The OP mentioned having sections of “unpartitioned” and “Unallocated” disk space. I just pointed out a way (not the only way) by using the manufacturers Tools disk to get a fully clean formatted disk to reinstall again.
I don’t think any of my information was incorrect just an alternative to all the previous information already posted.
Many people read these posts so even if the OP had no use for my reply I hope that someone else reading it will have gained some knowledge. I know I have learned much about all sorts of subject from reading posts on this forum.
