Win XP - Rant and Question
 

Some months ago my Win XP-powered PC died. I'd tried a stick of DRAM (scavenged from a server we were tossing out) and it corrupted my system files, so it said on bootup. Naturally I coudn't find my Win XP CD, and I've been loving the Mac, so didn't bother to try and fix it until today. So, I obtained another Win XP CD, booted from it, tried to do a "repair", it wouldn't do it for some reason. So I chose "setup" and Win XP installed fine, but appears to have wiped out all my settings, preferences, users, DLLs, "My Documents" folder, everything.

Not really a big deal - I don't keep my data in the "My Documents" folder anyway - but now I'm thinking. All the files in my "Program Files" appear to be intact, but the apps won't run since their DLLs are gone. Well, I don't use most of those apps anyway. So, can I simply delete all those "Program Files" folders and reinstall the few apps I actually want? Or should I reformat the c: drive and do a completely fresh install? I could do that, but it would be a bother to burn all the data to CD-ROM.

This is a fairly old PC, dual 600MHz P2s, and I'm trying not to putz around with it too much. Basically it'll be used for some websurfing and MS Office, the kids will play Barbie and Harry Potter, and I might play a little NFS from time to time.

do you know why your DLL files were deleted?
you could in theory uninstall, then delete, and then reinstall whichever programs you need. i would personally just do a clean sweep. its possible that some other data got wiped out and instead of dealing with small problems over and over i just prefer to overkill it.
if you have an extra hard drive it makes everything much easier

I think Win XP did a complete install in the original partition and directory. I saw it deleting the DLLs during the install. This is Win XP Pro if that matters.

I do have extra hard drives, I hate installing them due to pesky SCSI termination issues, but I guess I could.

You are right, I am leaning toward doing a complete brain wipe on the ol' PC. Sigh.

Does XP take advantage of dual processors? I didn't think it did.

Yes, Win XP Pro is dual-processor capable, as was Win NT. Don't know about Win XP Home. Prior consumer Windows (Win 98 etc) were not, AFAIK.

XP Home isn't.

[sj@id10t sj]$ uname -a
Linux id10t.dyndns.org 2.4.23 #1 SMP Fri Dec 5 22:14:22 EST 2003 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
[sj@id10t sj]$

easiest way to clean it is boot from the CD and make sure to delete the partition. Then re-create your partitions and re-install.

Keep all of your data in a central data directory with your outlook .pst file and back it up often to a cd, dvd, or network share. Whenever the machine starts getting whacky, rebuild it and restore your data. Once windows starts acting up, its usually easier to rebuild the machine than it is to troubleshoot it.

I'd put Linux on it then. That machine will rock with it. Instead of MS Office use OpenOffice - document format is interchangable. And your kids games will likely work with Wine.

Tell me more. Seriously, I am interested in trying Linux on this machine.

What distribution do you recommend?

Do dual-boot setups (Win XP, Linux) work okay, in case I want to keep the Win XP capability? Would you go so far as to install Win XP and Linux on separate hard drives - I have 8 drive bays and plenty of unused drives sitting around.

Will I need more RAM for Linux - I have 640MB now.

You won't need more memory, etc. I'd put Mandrake or Fedora Core on there. I'm not sure about dual booting with XP, I've been linux only for a long time. Check out www.linuxjunior.org and justlinux.com - lots of help there on dual booting.

Wine is a crapshoot. Even with Transgaming's WineX, It doesn't work for NFS:PU. I couldn't get GTA:VC to work either. Nor could I get Dark Forces 2 - Jedi Knight to work. Unfortunately those are the only three games I give a crap about these days.

That's the reason I would want to dual-boot - for games, graphics cards, and game controllers. I used to dual-boot Win 98 and Win NT on this machine, it worked fine.