Help! computer tech guru's. Re-formating my HD

[911ctS]

Hello, I would greatly appreciate if anyone can help me re format my C: drive. I am currently running a very poor / copied version of XP that I had installed over Windows ME (yes I was one of those unfortionate bastards that got screwed with having ME from Dell). Dell support was the worst once they found out I had ME, they pretty much just laughed at me and got me off the phone asap. Anyway I want to go legit and I would like to recieve Microsoft updates from now on, so I sprung out the $$ and bought Windows XP. My situation on the C: drive is less than ideal, with most likely viruses and corrupted files. How does one go about erasing EVERYTHING and installing XP fresh. I do have a second hard drive so if I move all of my valuble files will they still work once I am done? Also will I need to make a boot disk for my A: drive? I would very much appreciate any advise from any of you pelicans. Or if someone could point me in the direction of a good step by step procedure. I understand the process is pretty complicated. I know nothing about DOS or computers for that matter.
Thanks,
Clint

[john_colasante]

What you are trying to do it possible, but not easy for a total novice. Installing a fresh copy of XP retail is easy, just boot from the CDROM and choose "new install" and you will be given the choice to reformat the drive. When you are done, it will be fresh and new. Then, you can apply SP2 and the automatic updates, virus and adware scanners.

As far as saving your old stuff, that gets very complex. If your budget allows, get a brand new harddrive (HDD) and install the new XP on that, then use the old HDD as the backup (or D drive, and copy your old stuff over from there. Once all of the old stuff is migrated, you can reformat that old drive use it as backup storage, or get rid of it entirely.

Migrating files is easy, but migrating applications and application settings can be hard, especially when those apps use the registry to store information. It is possible to get that info out of the old registry, but it's an advanced thing. Just reinstall the apps.

This should get you started.

[gustav]

Assuming your machine isn't ancient, you should be able to boot up off of the XP CD.

Now, I usually do my installs from a DOS drive. I generally create two partitions, a small partition that I copy the i386 directory onto (say 1 gig) and then an NTFS partition used for the base install. I think this is out of scope though ... so lets continue down the path of least resistance.

Once you boot off of the NT CD, it should allow you to delete the fat32 partition that you current ME/XP install is on. That is, if it doesn't have to prestage it's setup files there (i never install from CD, so dont remember). Assuming it doesn't, there will be a point in the install - prior to the GUI, and while you're in the blue text screen - where it allows you to re partition your drive. If it does, do it. Blow away your current partition on your first drive (Drive C) and create a new one. Then select that as the install target and tell it to format NTFS.

NTFS might be a little slower than FAT.... But hear me out on this. It has filesystem level permissions, so if after you do the install, you create a non priveledged account and do you surfing there, virii, trojan, etc will have a harder time mucking up your system beccause the user you're running as won't have the ability to alter the files (and when the malware is instantiated, it will inherit those permissions and thus wont have access to much with system files either). This is not 100% true of course, because microsoft does a poor job on security in general (so some of their services are exploitable - usually through a buffer overflow, aka stack smashing).

I'm sure one of the windows admin types can give you more detail on the install and properly securing your box (truth is, if it's running MS Products only way to properly secure it is to pull the power chord : -)... I live in the unix world (slowaris) and generally don't have to deal with such issues.

Gus

[StevoRocket]

Oh dear Oh dear - the first post is the one I would go for - new hard drive - New legit XP and use the old C drive as a second drive on the system to give access to your old data/doc/photos/music. - this is exactly what I run now and is the easy one to do without getting into a spiral of complexity and gltches that the average home user could well do without.
By the way I have been a computerite since 1967!
A few pointers though which catch out people -ask me how I know!
When you have XP loaded and are feeling real cool - dont connect to the internet until you have A VERY GOOD VIRUS CHECKER! RUNNING!
AND Try to connect to the internet through a router WITH A FIREWALL!
UPDATE the virus checker files from their web site!
Then - load and update ALL microsoft updates for XP.
Then load Adaware (free) and Spybot (free) and the Microsoft spyware checker Beta (free) and run them every day!

Simple is best - the alternative can be whole days of ever frustrating costly calls to support telephone sites!

Good luck!

[rcecale]

Clint,

Whether you go with the new hdd or not, you still need to do the install. For a really good description and step-by-step instruction, including screenshots of the various screens you'll encounter along the way, click here. This guy has been around for a while and knows what he's doing. His site has helped me troubleshoot issues int= the past.

Good luck!

Randy

[Saintly]

It is an easy thing to do once you copy all of your files that you want to keep to the second drive (don't forget files on your desktop and your e-mail database file etc).
when your ready just boot your PC from the windows CD-ROM.
Select install windows (not repair).
Click through the screens till you get to the screen to select where to install. select the C: drive and select delete. then select the (now) free space and select create partition. then select install..
When prompted, select format NTFS (not quick format)

If your going to do this then i would recommend that you surf the net and make sure that you have a copy on your second disk drive of all of the latest driver install files for your system (inc video card, sound card, motherboard drivers, etc) as well as any common apps and utils that you use (like a firewall (www.zonealarm.com is free), anit-virus software, acrobat reader, winzip, etc) so that you can compleat the install and secure your PC before you risk going to the web.

Hope that helps.

[911ctS]

Thanks soooooo much you guys! This is great help.

I think getting a new HD is in order since my C: is only 10 gb anyways. NTFS sounds like it is far superior to the FAT partitions so I will format the new drive in NTFS. Also I will get some active virus protection.
I added my second HD about a year ago without any complications, but it was a slave drive. My only questions now are; Can I just take my old HD out and replace it with the new and then boot from the XP CD? Then can I use my old 10 gb HD as a third HD and wipe it clean without it corrupting my new one?

Thanks,
Clint

[gustav]

Originally posted by 911ctS
Thanks soooooo much you guys! This is great help.

Can I just take my old HD out and replace it with the new and then boot from the XP CD? Then can I use my old 10 gb HD as a third HD and wipe it clean without it corrupting my new one?

Thanks,
Clint

Yes, and likely yes.

Most compuers come with two IDE controllers. On each IDE controller, you will have two devices, primary and slave.

If you have two hard drives and a cdrom drive, assuming of course this is all ide (but chances are pretty good that it is), then you should have room for four ide devices (per controller).

Here's the thing about IDE. Only one device can talk on the bus at a time. So keep that in mind. Your new drive will probbably be the biggest in your system (since the price of storage goes down so quickly), so I'm guessing that you will do most of your installing and/or burning to/from the new drive. If this is the case, I would put your new drive on a different bus than your cd/burner/dvd/whatever.

Now turns to the question: how does your computer know which drive to boot off of? The answer is in your BIOS. Usually, to get into your bios you'll need to enter something like F1,F10 or during the power on self test (POST). If you set your new drive as anything but primary (controller) master (device) you will need to tell your BIOS where to boot from. Also, if everything is connected properly and you can't boot from CD, check the boot order in your BIOS to make sure the CDROM is the first device in the boot order (or it might try to boot from an old install).

With this in mind, I would make your settings as follows (though you'll probbably want to think about it more than me: -) :
Primary Master: New Drive
Prmary Salve: 10 Gig Drive (unless you've moved all your new stuff your second hard drive, then dont connect it at all - it's using a lot of power for so little space and hard drives are life limited anyways.. and most PCs dont have very big power supplies.. overload it and all of your components can go out in one sweet zap)
Secondary Master: 2nd hard drive
Secondary Slave: cdrom/dvd/whatever

IDE Devices are ususally master/slave selectable using jumpers.

I should also mention that thinner stranded cable vs thicker stuff. I think the thicker stuff is rated for only a 66mhz bus, and for 100/133 you likely have a thinner cable. If a device on a bus is only rated at the lower 33 or 66mhz, i think it forces the entire ide bus speed down to it's max. So that's something to think about when puting everything together.

Good luck

[stevepaa]

"By the way I have been a computerite since 1967!"

Me since '65, but that was on a teletype to a big mainframe at Berkely.
What was yours?

[StevoRocket]

GE225 - made by GE america and I worked for a GE company in Staffordshire UK - wrote stock control and financial programs in GECOM - a COBOL subset.

[stevepaa]

I was 16, in high school and we had a teletype into a mainframe at Lawrence Berkely Lab.

Hard for some to imagine old farts like us, who used to sit at punch card machines, able to offer salient advice on current machines. But there really is nothing much new, just the packaging.

[911ctS]

Wow...

after a whole day of farting around with my computer and doing what we talked about above I have run into another problem. So far I have taken out all of my old HD's and installed a new Segate 80 GB one as the master. I set the BIOS to boot from CD ROM and put in the Segate setup CD. The Segate HD setup ran successfully and partitioned my new HD in NTFS, then it asked what OS I planed on running so I checked the XP box. Though it was strange thing that the Windows ME box was checked by default, I moved the checkmark to the XP box but how did it know that I once had ME? Anyway the setup went very well and then it told me to reboot and put in my OS CD to install Windows XP. I did exactly that. Now it wont install my XP program. The DELL screen comes up and then it goes into DOS and it just says NTLDR is missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. I restart and then the same thing happens over and over and over. This sucks! What is wrong? I know you guys have helped me alot so far and I really appreciate it. Thanks.

[gustav]

Ok, a couple of things here. You shouldn't need to use the seagate setup utility to setup your HD, assuming your machine isn't ancient. These utils are are usually for machines with really old BIOS's that can't address drives.... That said, it prolly won't hinder, but likely won't help.

NTLDR is the boot loader for NT/2k/XP/etc. Essentially, it loads the microkernel and HAL into memory. HAL is essentially one really big process that talks to all of the peripherals in your machine (Hardware Abstraction Layer).

I think there's a preloader before ntldr that installs, a boot manager. So what I'm thinking is this... The seagate install CD installed a boot manager on the drive, which is looking for ntldr.

So what it sounds like is you're booting off of your HD, not the CD. MS puts a little program on the cd which will boot from your HD if you don't give it input... They do this so if you leave the CD in the drive and reboot it won't boot off the CD automatically. I don't remember what it says exactly, but I think it says something like 'press any key to boot up off of the xp install cd'. You have a small window of time to push a key, and if you don't it'll try to boot up off of the HD.

[Saintly]

don't start with the segate or dell disks. set the bios to boot from cd, insert the winXP cd, the screen will come up with something like "press any key to boot from cd", press the any key.
boot from the WinXP cd and start the install process from that.

[Saintly]

I agree with gustav

[john_colasante]

Clint, start over. Take all of the HDD's out except the new one as master. Now, with just one HDD go ahead and boot off the Windows XP retail CDROM. Do not use the other ones you got with the PC. The Windows XP retail CDROM will allow you to make a new partition and format the new drive and install a totally clean version of XP. Make one big partition (80GB) and that will be your C: drive. After that's all done and rebooted a few times, then go ahead and put in the second HDD and you'll see all your old stuff on it. It will be the D: drive.

[911ctS]

Cool thanks everyone! I'm up and running now. Yeee Haaa.

[gustav]

Originally posted by 911ctS
Cool thanks everyone! I'm up and running now. Yeee Haaa.

What was the fix to get it to boot off cd?