Tutorials

Installing Memory modules

Installing Windows XP On A New PC Or A New Hard Drive

Installing Windows XP On A Multiple Hard Drive PC With A New Primary Drive

Reinstalling Windows XP

Update In-Place Reinstallation Of Windows XP

Repair In-Place Reinstallation Of Windows XP

To perform a Repair in-place reinstallation of Windows XP, follow these steps:

1. Power on your computer and immediately insert the Windows XP Installation CD into the optical drive. Wait for the Welcome to Setup screen (white text on blue background) to appear.

2. Select the To Set Up Windows XP Now, Press Enter option by pressing the Enter key. Caution: Although you’re performing a Repair reinstallation, do not select To Repair a Windows XP Installation using Recovery Console, press R option. The Recovery Console has many tools for many types of repair, but regrettably, it won’t help you here.

3. At the next screen (the End-User License Agreement) press the F8 key.

4. Here Setup searches for any existing Windows XP installation. Upon locating the malfunctioning  operating system, it identifies it by the hard drive letter and primary folder (usually C:\Windows). If you have more than one OS on your machine, use the arrow keys to choose the installation you want to repair. If Windows does not find any existing version, don’t continue the installation, as doing so will cause damage to all your files on the selected hard disk.

5. When you have selected the installation you want to repair, press R. At this stage, Windows starts copying files. Enter the Installation CD key when asked to do so, among other things.

6. When reinstallation completes, before doing any other thing install SP2 and antivirus software and then launch Windows update to install the latest service packs and other critical and optional updates.

7. Test your system to know if everything is working well.

Type2: Clean Reinstallation of Windows XP: Performing a clean reinstallation on a machine with only one partition entails wiping that partition clean of data. So, back up all your needed data on an external hard drive. Alternatively, preserve your existing data on one drive partition and install Windows XP on another partition, but if the partitions are not already set up, you risk losing any data you haven’t backed up. More or less, this method is a completely new installation to which you can restore your data stored on the original partition.

Preparing For The Clean Reinstallation: Here again we assume that you want to reinstall Windows without losing your existing data. If you want to reinstall Windows without having to reinstall your data from an external backup, you need a separate hard disk partition. To see your partitions, open the Computer Management console. To do that, click Start and choose All Programs and go to Administrative Tools to find it. Or use Winlogo+R, compmgmt.msc, and the Disk Management item on the left. The drive letters will appear with each partition, as well as the partition type:NTFS, FAT32 or FAT.

Note: Windows starts numbering partitions from 0 (zero) not 1. The primary partition, C, is located on Disk 0, not Disk 1.

To do the installation itself:

1. Turn on your computer and immediately insert the Windows Xp Installation CD into your optical drive. Wait for Welcome to Setup screen to appear.

2. Select the To Set Up Windows XP Now, Press ENTER option by pressing the Enter key.

3. At the next screen, (the license agreement), press the F8 key.

4. Setup searches for any existing Windows installation, and when it finds it, it identifies it by the hard drive letter and the primary folder-almost always C:\WINDOWS. Because you want a clean reinstallation, ignore the first bullet point, which refers to repairing the selected installation. Choose the To Continue Installing a Fresh Copy of Windows XP Without Repairing, Press ESC option. After pressing the Escape key, Windows does its work of installation, as covered in the Installation of Windows XP.

5. When reinstallation tasks complete, install SP2 from CD, then your antivirus software and then launch Windows Update, to install the latest service packs and other critical and optional updates.

6. Finally test your newly reinstalled Windows to see if it works well.