XP reinstall guidance?

[Odyssey]

My weary old Dell 4600 WXP has been getting ever slower and more in need of a long put-off reinstall. So I have been making backups, deleting stuff, and generally cleaning up over the past 2 or 3 weeks in anticipation of doing so.

In anticipation of the much dreaded re-install, does anyone know of any how-to's on the web that anticipate real world issues such as, by way of example, the most expeditious way of updating XP after the install while minimizing the risks attendant to being on the internet with not fully updated XP?

I am sure that the complete reinstall can be done more easily by a little advance planning and doubtless someone has written a very good how-to that maybe one of N4N members might know of and can recommend? Failing a how-to, any suggestions?

TIA.

[Doctor Snuggles]

How are you going to re-install, via restore partition or with a windows oem disc?

Easiest would be via dell restore disc or partition as you wont need to activate windows, any other method using product the key on case will result in having to telephone ms to activate.

If your going to do a clean install with an oem disc, make sure you go to dell website and download all drivers for your model before you start, burn them to disc. If your windows disc does not include service pack 2 Go here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx to download it and burn it to disc.

To do clean install you will need to be able to boot from the oem disc, you may have to go into your mb bios to set the first boot device to cdrom.

Boot from disc, delete existing partition and create new one, format and re-install windows, then sp2, then mb chipset drivers, sound, graphics plus any others like network adaptor.

Activate windows, and download all windows updates

[onomatopoeia]

None of my 2000 or XP machines have ever needed re-installing and some of them have been in use for up to seven years. I don't understand the need on an NT kernel operating system.

[Gina]

No, I've never reinstalled Windows XP on any of my computers either thogh I have done it for other people. I found it pretty reliable. As Dave said above, easiest is to use the factory restore disc - that just runs and you have your Windows system exactly as it was when you bought your PC. In any event you have to find all your install discs for the software you want and (maybe) discs or downloads for the updates (though I ran my laptop with the original XP without even SP1 for 8 yearsand without any updates.

Having said that... now would be an excellent time to try Ubuntu Linux - it's a real doddle to install - in most cases it just works. It comes with Firefox browser, email client and a full office suite, which are all installed in about half an hour (probably quicker if you have a PC less than 5 years old. What software you might want that isn't included is easily installed with a couple of mouse clicks from a librabrary of literally thousands of applications. It has many of the features now supplied with Vista and very easy to use. See my sig for more info or go to www.ubuntu.com :) If you don't like it or something doesn't work you haven't lost anything - just reinstall XP.

[Geoffw]

I used to regularly format the HD and re-install everything on my XP desktop - especially when the kids were at home and installing all sorts of rubbish. It used to take half a day to do it and you always felt it finished up a leaner and meaner machine.

Probably all subjective I expect.

[Odyssey]

Thanks for all the helpful guidance. I had not yet decided on whether to Dell restore disk or to use the MS SP2 disk and this is one of the questions I hoped to get some thoughts on.

To cast a new light on this, I have considered removing the original 40GB hdd and replacing it with a 160GB I have at hand because the original is getting a bit long in the tooth and who knows what the life of a hdd is, and I will use the 40 GB in one of my Ubuntu machines for experimentation.

Is there any reason why I cannot burn all the updates to a CD to use for updating XP offline to minimize the exposure during updating? If this is a practical approach, would you recommend using the Dell website as a source for the updates or is there a better alternative. I don't ever go to the Dell website so unsure if there is any difference in the updates available there that offer any advantage (given that mine is a Dell machine).

I suspect that the reason for the continuing slowdown has to do with the vast number of proggies that have been installed, then uninstalled (or simply forgotten about) over the years. NT or not, it still uses a registry and according to regcleaner, there are about 400 'problems' in the registry. (I have not allowed it to delete all these problems yet, but will do so just before I am ready to reinstall. If it does the job that it is supposed to do, then maybe the reinstall will be unnecessary. Will report on this.)

'then mb chipset drivers, sound, graphics plus any others like network adaptor.' AFAIK, none of these have been updated unless they did it without my knowledge. I go by the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' rule and there has never been a problem (at least to my knowledge) so I haven't updated any. Now if the reinstall is going to wipe out any drivers, I will have to deal with it and this may be a good reason to use the Dell updates? Any advice here?

Also why delete and reinstall the partition?

Another area, and the one that actually takes the most time, is reinstalling all the other software after Windoze is reinstalled, and then configuring both Windoze and the other proggies to operate the way you want them to. I supose there is no way to avoid this however?

Gina, you are indeed a committed and tireless Linux advocate, and I am hoping that 2008 is the year that will get me off Windoze entirely. I said this a year ago, but got sidetracked on a year-long project and I lost the Ubuntu thread. I intend to get this back on track however.

[Doctor Snuggles]

To cast a new light on this, I have considered removing the original 40GB hdd and replacing it with a 160GB I have at hand because the original is getting a bit long in the tooth and who knows what the life of a hdd is, and I will use the 40 GB in one of my Ubuntu machines for experimentation

Change the HD and you will need to use a windows oem disk to reinstall, you will need all your drivers beforehand. you wont be able to activate online if you use the key attached to your tower, you will need to phone ms to explain and activate.

Is there any reason why I cannot burn all the updates to a CD to use for updating XP offline to minimize the exposure during updating? If this is a practical approach, would you recommend using the Dell website as a source for the updates or is there a better alternative. I don't ever go to the Dell website so unsure if there is any difference in the updates available there that offer any advantage (given that mine is a Dell machine).

Short answer is no. you get driver updates from dell and windows updates from windows update, you seem confused. Dont get paranoid about "exposure" you will be fine as long as you have installed service pack 2 first before connecting to net to activate and download the rest of updates. Download AVG antivirus and install before doing anything else if your really worried.

'then mb chipset drivers, sound, graphics plus any others like network adaptor.' AFAIK, none of these have been updated unless they did it without my knowledge. I go by the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' rule and there has never been a problem (at least to my knowledge) so I haven't updated any. Now if the reinstall is going to wipe out any drivers, I will have to deal with it and this may be a good reason to use the Dell updates? Any advice here?

As already said you need the drivers from dell to re-install, if you do a clean re-install or change your disk you wont have them will you as you hd will be blanked.

Also why delete and reinstall the partition?

If you dont you wont do a clean install, just a repair install (copying over the old) that wont solve your problems, maybe create more.

[Gina]

Up to a point a bigger hard drive is also a faster hard drive. Swapping the 30GB HD on my laptop with a 120GB produced a noticeable improvement in speed though not as much as replacing a 10GB on my ancient desktop with a 250Gig drive :lol Modern drives are also quieter. So, yes, I think upgrading the HD would give you a speed improvement (you could also bung Ubuntu on it and dual boot :lol)

I have heard of people making an upgrade CD for Windows XP - seems a very sensible idea :) Any time in the future if you want to reinstall, much of the work is already done.

Regarding registry cleaning - if you take care to make a backup of all five "hives" before running the cleaner you should be safe if things go wrong. I have run a cleaner in the past and not had a problem. Can't remember which one though.

Regarding having to reinstall everything... You could back up the complete Windows partition onto either another HD or multiple DVDs. There are several software applications that will do this (and restore, of course). I use PartImage, a Linux app but there are also Windows ones. PartImage will run off a live CD and backup onto multiple DVDs or CDs, another HD or over a network. (I did find it a bit slow over a 54Mbps wireless network though :lol) It doesn't care what format the partition uses as it backs up byte by byte, raw data. The destination file format may be FAT or ext2/3 (Linux) or even NTFS I think. There are 3 levels of compression you can choose - none, low and fast, or high and slow. Which is best depends on your PC speed and data transfer speed.

The advantage of backing up the complete partition is that you have everything exactly as it was at the point of backup - all progs installed, everything set up etc. Much like System Restore but more so, if you get my meaning. So... after reinstalling everything and setting up preferences etc. do a backup. Then you have a snapshot of your system that may be readily restored. One point though - make sure the partition you restore to is exactly the same size and in the same place on the HD. Preferable right at the beginning for Windows. Otherwise, Windows will not boot.

[Gina]

Gina, you are indeed a committed and tireless Linux advocate, and I am hoping that 2008 is the year that will get me off Windoze entirely. I said this a year ago, but got sidetracked on a year-long project and I lost the Ubuntu thread. I intend to get this back on track however.Oh yes :lol I love linux :lol In the form of Ubuntu. I find it so much easier to use than Windoze as well as much faster. It seems so very logical to me - I have never found Microsoft stuff logical :lol

Actually, I'm just installing Ubuntu 7.10 on my ancient laptop (must be about 10 yrs old or more). 400MHz Celeron, 128MB RAM and 6GB HD. I think it's struggling :lol I managed to get an earlier version working on it :) 7.10 works a treat on my 6yr old laptop :):)

If/when you want to get back to looking at Ubuntu, I'll be happy to help with any problems you might have :)

[addysmith]

Wel yea you can reinstall it from a bootable c d of windows .. but forst delete all the drives of say formet them ......