Will this work - reinstall OS

C

carolinatim

New Member
I have a Dell 4550 that is a few years old and has a lot of stuff on it so it's kinda slow now (memory is maxed at 1GB). It has 2 HD's, the original 30GB and a 250GB I installed about a year ago because the original was full, designated C and F drives. I cloned the 30GB to the 250GB when I installed it and it now boots from the new 250GB HD.

My question is this: Can I re-install the OS (WIN XP) on the original 30GB HD and set the computer to boot from there in order to speed everything up? This would preserve all of my info on the new HD and be accessible when I need it, right?

Thanks
CT
 
Yes you can reinstall windows XP on your C (original) drive. You're going to have to go into bios to select your Primary hard drive. When you first turn on your computer (or from a restart) wait a minute and press the delete button (or another button if it says to, it will say something like "press del to enter bios) Once you enter bios, you have to go to the "Boot" section. Go to the boot section and select your 30GB drive to be the SECOND one on the boot list. (Your CD ROM should be the FIRST one on your boot list). After selecting that, go to exit and "exit saving changes". Now you can stick in the XP cd and install your OS on your C drive. Just make SURE that you select the correct drive when installing the OS.

If you have an IDE connection you may have to switch out the IDE connections so that your 30GB drive is the MASTER and your 250GB is the slave. Make sense?
 
oh, one more thing. My XP install disk is SP1, if I remember correctly microsoft no longer supports SP1. Will I have to buy another copy of the OS now?
 
It would be easier to slipstream the service pack into a new install cd using autostreamer. No need to install SP1 and then upgrade to SP3, takes too much time and too many headaches after the fact.
 
johnb35 said:
It would be easier to slipstream the service pack into a new install cd using autostreamer. No need to install SP1 and then upgrade to SP3, takes too much time and too many headaches after the fact.
Click to expand...

Agreed, saves time not having to reinstall SP3 ever time you do a clean install. nLite works pretty good too.
 
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