Re: Ongoing sp2 nightmares

At no point do you mention what 'brain farts' actually are.
You might want to run your hd manu diagnostics, free tool, and also test
your memory, over several hours.
http://www.memtest.org/

"Drew" <Drew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11ACF623-E6CF-4162-831E-4D3475ECDDBF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well...I would like to apologize if I offended anybody by the way I
posted...Frustration setting in I suppose....You have definitely gone into
great detail in your response and what you say is making great
sense....One
curiosity I have is you say that my windows firewall would be
suffiicient,,I
thought I was supposed to run something stronger ??..I have used Norton
because of problems I have seen with others mostly Mcafee...Since you seem
to
be very informed on these procedures maybe you could go into more detail
on
how to restore things like e-mail as well as game settings (how do I back
them up individually ?)You mentioned something in paragraph 10c about
corruption of this system..I believe that is the problem as I am noticing
different bugs at different times.. I cannot thank you enough for going to
the lengths you did to
explain.................................................Drew

"Shenan Stanley" wrote:

Drew wrote:
To all I ask...I have consistantly had problems with sp2 causing
brain farts with my system...It has gotten to the point of needing
to do a fresh install of win xp sp2 (slipstreamed disc) on a 2nd
drive and then one by one adding my programs and games to it until
I find out where I get the conflict...Here is where it gets
confusing...Since I connect to the net through a router will I lose
those settings ? also since my video card drivers are on the
computer on the first drive will I have to reinstall those ( as
well as all the other drivers ?) Can you drag and drop programs
from my first drive onto the 2nd drive rather than reinstall them
??..Need advice on all this PLEASE !!!

Running Widows xp sp1a with a lot of sp2 as well
P4 2.8 with h/t
2gigs of ddr400 ram
Nvidia 7600gs oc 256mg vid card
Dell 24" lcd monitor
Linksys wrt54g v4 router
fastest dsl available in town
running 2 sata drives
Norton Security 2006
Sunbelt's Counterspy
Bill Ps' Winpatrol
All latest drivers and updates

I appreciate all help you can
provide.

Noozer wrote:
First - Install the new hard drive and format it NTFS
Second - Go online and download the newest drivers for all of your
hardware. Put them in a folder on the second hard drive
Third - DISCONNECT THE OLD DRIVE. You're letters will all screwed up
otherwise.
Fourth - Boot from the XP CD and install. Don't format the drive or
you'll lose your drivers.
Fifth - Once XP is installed, install your drivers and REBOOT
whenever you're asked to.
Six - Visit Windows Update and get all your updates
Seventh - Reconnect old drive and copy any *DATA* files to the new
drive that you want to keep. Do *NOT* try to take shortcuts and
copy programs over.
Eighth - Reinstall your programs, one by one, testing system
stability between each. ***DO NOT INSTALL ANY NORTON software***
Also CounterSpy and Winpatrol also sound like questionable
software. Get a hardware router and that will protect you from many
things. Get AVG free AV. Do a spyware scan with AdAware occasionaly
and use Microsofts Malicious software check as well.

...of course, during all this, you'll be monitoring for whatever it
is that is making your computer ill.

Drew wrote:
I appreciate your response..First off I thought if you install
windows ion a non partitioned drive it would overwrite anything
that is on the drive... Secondly I have been running both
Counterspy ..2nd highest ranked antispyware there is (Microsoft's
defender written on same code) as well as winpatrol for several yrs
and have never had any problems with either (not that therin may be
a problem)
Third ..Do we suspect a problem with Norton?? I have been a
subscriber to it for at least 7yrs,Although 2006 version very slow
in comparison..I am connected to a hardware router (Linksys wrt54g
) It has a hardware firewall...New hard drive is already installed
and formatted ntfs with nothing on it..I have created a
slipstreamed xp sp2 disc and have it ready to go...I am or was
simply trying to find out if I could somehow do a fresh install
without losing all my games,,pics,,,music,,e-mail etc.....Thanks
again for your help

First - that is the point.

Second - being (reportedly by some sourses) the best does not guarantee
compatibility with every combination of everything.

Third - Norton is (for home users) the largest resource hog of all the
anti-whatever softwares out there and has the most reported issues (even
trying to remove it can kill machines) of such type of software on these
newsgroups. Especially their "all-in-one" suites.

Fourth - it is goot you are connected to a NAT device. That's some
protection - but is not *truly* a firewall. You should still utilize
some
sort of software firewall, IMHO.

You decided to multipost instead of crossposting - bad call - you would
have
gotten better answers and discussions in a crosspost *if* your topic was
actually relevant in more than one newsgroup:
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm

What you could do is to use an imaging application to clone your old
hard
drive to your new, remove the old hard drive - ensure any jumpers are
set
*that need to be* on the new hard drive and boot with it. But you want
to
do a fresh install. The instructions you got make sense - but I think
you
want to do it this way:

1. Download all the current hardware drivers for your machine from the
manufacturer's web sites and burn those to a new CD or write them to a
thumb
drive or some external device.

2. Disconnect the old hard disk drive. Make sure the jumpers are set
(if
needed) to allow you to boot/make it the primary on the new drive.

3. Disconnect from any method the computer could use to connect tot he
Internet.

4. Boot from your Windows XP SP2 CD and install... Yes - create and
format
an NTFS partition.

5. Install all of your hardware drivers that you downloaded in step 1.

6. Make sure the Windows XP SP2 firewall is enabled.

7. Connect back to the Internet and visit
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and scan for/install all critical
updates... Do NOT get hardware drivers from here. If you turn your
Automatic Updates on, set it to download the updates and notify you -
but
not install.

8. Once you have visited the updates page enough times to not have any
critical updates left - install your Antivirus Software and make sure it
is
up to date. If it is Norton - *just* install Antivirus. If you do not
have
this choice - get yourself a FREE antivirus software - here are some to
choose from:

AntiVir (Free and up)
http://www.free-av.com/

avast! (Free and up)
http://www.avast.com/

AVG Anti-Virus System (Free and up)
http://free.grisoft.com/

Later you can get a different (than a norton suite) product if you
desire:

eset NOD32 (~$39.00 and up)
http://www.eset.com/products/products.htm

Kaspersky Anti-Virus (~$49.95 and up)
http://www.kaspersky.com/products.html

Trend Micro (~$49.95 and up)
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/home/us/personal.htm

But *just* get an antivirus. In your case the Windows Firewall will be
more
than sufficient and easier to manage *and* use less resources.
All-in-One
suites are generally badly done and use up resources better utilized by
the
user.

9. Now that you have updated and have your antivirus installed and
updated -
it's time to turn off, change jumpers (if needed) on the old hard disk
drive
so it can live as a secondary drive and connect it/power back up with
your
new drive as boot again. You should be able to see the old drive's
data...
Worst case, you might have to take ownership of files/folders:

How to Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

How to disable simplified sharing & set permissions
on a shared folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874

Read everything CAREFULLY!

* Do not start copying over anything just yet. This is just to save
time
later.

10. Now that you have some of the basics done - start installing your
other
software.

I cannot personally see any reason for an "active" antspyware
application.
I don't use one, don't have any installed on machines at work, etc. I
do
recpmmend more passive means - like SpywareBlaster, IE-SpyAd, and using
the
immunization features of Spybot Search and Destroy. I leave those
installed
on many systems as well as LavaSoft AdAware for occassional scanning.

As for your other applications (office suites, picture editors, music
players, etc...) <- just make sure you have the latest version you are
eligible for and all associated patches up until *now*. Keeping your
applications up to date is as important as Windows and your hardware
drivers.

Yes - you are going to have to completely reinstall everything - no you
cannot just *copy* it from the old drive. Yes - you have access to it
on
the old drive, but no - it wouldn't work for 90% of the software. Just
install everything one at a time and see if you end up with trouble
after a
reboot each major component. If not - then it is more likely something
got
corrupted on your old system.

11. When done - you can look for and grab all of your
files/folders/favorites/etc. You can restore your email from either a
backup or a transfer procedure - depending on what client you used. As
I
said before - you may have to take ownership of some files/folders on
the
old drive to do any of this.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html





.

Relevant Pages

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