Re: Help Reinstalling Windows XP
- From: Hodges <mrezoustah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 18:27:09 -0700 (PDT)
On Oct 2, 10:25 am, "Ken Blake, MVP"
<kbl...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009 02:28:02 -0700, Pete Harris
<PeteHar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I need to reinstal windows XP. I have found
http//support.microsoft.com/kb/315341 and some other guides through a google
search. These look good but is there any more info, or pitfalls, I need to be
aware of before starting.
Just being very very cautious before I start!!!
You've already gotten some good "how-to" answers. Let me ask why do
you "need" to do this?
Here's my standard post on this subject:
In my view, it's usually a mistake. With a modicum of care, it should
never be necessary to reinstall Windows (XP or any other version).
I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows
2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and now Windows 7, each for the
period of time before the next version came out, and each on two or
more machines here. I never reinstalled any of them, and I have never
had anything more than an occasional minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.
And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find yourself back in exactly the
same situation.
If you have problems, post the details of them here; it's likely that
someone can help you and a reinstallation won't be required.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup
To elaborate on my previous post...
Programs often leave stuff behind. It's easy enough to go into the
"program files" folder and delete them, but some leave stuff behind in
"My Documents", "Application Data", and lots of other folders as well
as temp files and registry keys that get left behind AFTER running
registry/temp file cleaners such as CCleaner (which I recommend).
After viruses/trojans/malware has been run, it can be cleaned but it
often leaves annoying changes, sometimes ones that you won't even
notice for a while and will have to dig through group policy or the
registry to correct.
Yes, anything that's changed "can" be changed back, but it takes a lot
of work and sometimes isn't worth it. It can take hours to
troubleshoot a single problem if you've never dealt with it before.
Installing the OS may take between half an hour and an hour from cd
(longer on very old computers), about 15-20 minutes if you install it
over the network through Windows PE, or about 3-5 minutes with Norton
Ghost.
Assuming you haven't ghosted or used WMI, it will take less than 20
minutes to find, download, and install the drivers if you know what
you're looking for. Often I don't really install programs until I
need them. Most programs take 5 minutes or less to download and
install.
The best thing you can do is perform regular defragging/virus scanning/
backups, and disable unneeded startup items.
I'll agree that reconfiguring Windows and applications with custom
themes and settings as well as backing up & restoring data is time
consuming; however, the benefit greatly outweighs the alternative.
Besides, the more practice you get the faster you can do it. That
gives you more flexibility to learn the intricacies of the OS without
having to be afraid of making a mistake you can't undo.
Just my 2¢.
.
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