How to reinstall operating system

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larryq22

New Member
This is probably a simple question, but I may have to reinstall Win XP because the computer has gotten sluggish over the years. Is it as simple as putting the CD in the drive and going through the install process? I'm concerned that I'll lose functionality with some programs that depended on the "old" os setup.

Thanks,
Larry
 
larryq22 said:
This is probably a simple question, but I may have to reinstall Win XP because the computer has gotten sluggish over the years. Is it as simple as putting the CD in the drive and going through the install process? I'm concerned that I'll lose functionality with some programs that depended on the "old" os setup.

Thanks,
Larry
Click to expand...

You certainly need to make sure you have all your software..You may have more than one disc-you may have a disc for the drivers...If you have all your software than you have nothing to worry about..and you will have to go into the bios and set your first boot device to boot from the cdrom in order to boot from your OS disc....
 
Here is a step by step illustrated tutorial of installing XP. But all ur installed softwares and drivers will be removed. U will have to reinstall all the drivers and softwares. So do a clean install only if you have driver CD at hand. As for the other softwares, most of them can be found on internet.
 
If you want to reinstall the computer's OS then the first things that you must do is.
1. Back up the files form the computer that you are going to format to writable CD or to an external storage devices.
2. Prepare the CD drivers of the computer like th mother board driver and the other PCI or PCI e components.
3. Prepare the OS CD installer that you are going to use and it's CD key.

That is the fist three things that you must do first before you do the re installation. Then just follow this site guide on how to perform it
 
I find the easiest way to get the job done is to kill the partition. That way, the Windows installation never gets confused. You can go to the Seagate website and download a program called Seatools. It is a bootable DOS program that does a number of things. One of them is erasing sector 1 on the hard drive. That will get you started with a clean slate. Personally, I use a DOS disk with fdisk.com on it. That is a quick and easy way to erase a partition. Others have already reminded you about file backups and application installation disks.
 
fmw said:
I find the easiest way to get the job done is to kill the partition. That way, the Windows installation never gets confused. You can go to the Seagate website and download a program called Seatools. It is a bootable DOS program that does a number of things. One of them is erasing sector 1 on the hard drive. That will get you started with a clean slate. Personally, I use a DOS disk with fdisk.com on it. That is a quick and easy way to erase a partition. Others have already reminded you about file backups and application installation disks.
Click to expand...

Well that is also a good point you can also try it out. But watch on your partitions you might end up erasing some of your partitions as well.
 
1. backup all stuff you will need. This does not include programs that you can simply download again or you have the discs to reinstall, only stuff like downloaded music and movies, important files and documents, pictures etc.

2.When you have everything you need (double check just to be cretain!!) ensure that you have atleast your network card drivers. If you can get them installed after reboot then you can get to the internet and get the others, but the more you can get beforehand the better. The following you will need:

video card drivers
network card drivers
sound card/onboard sound drivers
possibly motherboard drivers

everything else should just plug and play quite happily

3. find your key. If it is prebuilt it will be on the side of the case if it is a desktop or if it is a laptop on the base of the machine.

4. pop your XP disk in and follow the instructions it shows. You will need to format the main drive that it will be installed on and then install it on that fresh drive.

5. Install the drivers you got before and you are done!!

To stop it from becoming sluggish again get this. It is a program called ccleaner and cleans out your temporary files, cookies, recycle bin etc and also can fix any dodgy registry entries.

Also, you may want to consider getting a different defragmenter tool. The xp one is good (much better than the vista one) but there are still much better. There are loads of free ones out there but if you aer willing to pay i would recomend O&O as it is, from my experience, the best defragmentation tool that there currently is.

Those together should keep your system running smooth and stable
 
You've gotten some great advice so far.
All I would add is a tip to make the process easier in the future.

There are programs that will copy your entire partition (in other words - make an image of it) and save it as a single file. That includes the entire operating system, drivers, programs installed etc... In the future, if the computer seems sluggish or if you run into problems that you can't fix, all you do is tell the program to restore that image file. In a matter of 15 minutes you have your computer back at the exact point when you created that image file. It's the same as if you had reinstalled Windows, and manually reinstalled all drivers and all programs. It just saves you a ton of time and work.

I do this regularly, and restore my PC every 4-6 months. That way it stays running as if everything was freshly installed. After I restore, I let windows and other programs update everything they need to update. Then, I create an image file of those new changes (it takes just a minute to do so). That way, the next time around I can choose to restore my PC to the original big image file, or to that big file plus the newest update.

It might sound a bit confusing, but I find that method really helpful.
After you are done reinstalling all your drivers, programs etc., you can think about trying it out.

One of the common programs out there is:
Acronis True Image
 
PC Hobbyist said:
You've gotten some great advice so far.
All I would add is a tip to make the process easier in the future.

There are programs that will copy your entire partition (in other words - make an image of it) and save it as a single file. That includes the entire operating system, drivers, programs installed etc... In the future, if the computer seems sluggish or if you run into problems that you can't fix, all you do is tell the program to restore that image file. In a matter of 15 minutes you have your computer back at the exact point when you created that image file. It's the same as if you had reinstalled Windows, and manually reinstalled all drivers and all programs. It just saves you a ton of time and work.

I do this regularly, and restore my PC every 4-6 months. That way it stays running as if everything was freshly installed. After I restore, I let windows and other programs update everything they need to update. Then, I create an image file of those new changes (it takes just a minute to do so). That way, the next time around I can choose to restore my PC to the original big image file, or to that big file plus the newest update.

It might sound a bit confusing, but I find that method really helpful.
After you are done reinstalling all your drivers, programs etc., you can think about trying it out.

One of the common programs out there is:
Acronis True Image
Click to expand...
You can also use his recommend method. It's also recommended by ojher professional computer users.
 
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