Windows XP to Vista problem

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venividivici

New Member
A couple weeks ago my free Vista upgrade came by UPS and seeing as I had been having problems with Windows XP I decided to go about upgrading.

Now about a week before I got the Vista upgrade I had to do a fresh installation of Windows XP however for some reason it saved it to my secondary internal hard drive as opposed to my main hard drive.

So now I have 2 sets of Windows XP on my computer. I then tried to install Vista however after it restarted it took me back to the progress screen and it would not do anything. I was at roughly 46%.

Now that I am having problems with my computer restarting randomly which I think could be from either a windows problem or a heating problem I am trying to figure out how to wipe both my internal hard drives clean, get rid of both sets of Windows XP and have just Windows Vista on my system.

Any idea on how I can do this? I have no idea how to get rid of a copy of windows on a secondary hard drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If it helps, it is Windows XP MCE.
 
The one drive tool that will clean any OS off of any drive won't cost you more then a cd-r namely GParted live for cd a Linux drive tool there. If you have a new Linux live distro on cd or a cd burner available you can download GParted and a free version of BurnOn for seeing the 35mb iso image burned to a bootable disk. The links here will clean both drives easily. The XP installer may fail to clean the one where Vista files were copied to it being a newer version of Windows.

For GParted 0.3.3.0 go to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 It will have 12 other versions to ignore above it on the page there. You want a platform independent release. Screen shots for this are found at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

BurnOn is found at http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/ Apparently when you thought you were reinstalling XP on the primary you actually installed a second copy on the other drive. Once you have both drives clean GParted can also create new NTFS partitions on both. Below the "Install Now" button for the Vista installer when booting with that you will now see the option to format drives. Or you can first install Vista and use the Disk Management tool for format of the second drive after the installation is done.
 
Thanks for the great advice. I will take a further look and see if I cannot get this all accomplished. I just hope this will solve my current random shutdown problem as it is very annoying. I would rather it be an OS problem as opposed to a heat problem.

Thanks so much again!
 
I still wouldn't rulle out using a program like SpeedFan to see just where your spu and board temps are. On the old build here when seeing sudden restarts and memory errors on perfectly defect free memory the cpu temps were soaring in the clouds! The fan simply quit on a Scythe cpu cooler one day where 74C was average until the 85C max temp was reached. With a Zalman on the new build it may see 43C when running a heavy load for 16hrs. or better and about 33C idle. SpeedFan is free at http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
 
I use SpeedFan already and it has been a handy tool although now that it is not so bloody hot in my apartment (mini heatwave a couple days ago), and because I took the side panel off my tower I got the temperatures down roughly 6-10C by just doing that.

I also thought it might have been my 2 320GB WD hard drives overheating as I had them sitting on top of each other so I moved the second one up to the top rack.

I still get the random restarts which seem to occur mainly when the computer is left idle. Now and then it will restart as I might have mentioned when I am watching a movie.

Currently my temps are:

CPU: 35C
AUX: 37C
HD0: 34C
HD1: 32C
Temp1: 40C

I bought a new hard drive today that I am going to install and take the other 2 out and then install Vista on the new drive and then put the other two back in afterwards to just transfer the media files I want to keep. I have about 400GB of media files that I need to get off my 2 current hard drives and I don't have enough space on my 3 250GB external drives.

I need to get my old rig working again so I can just use it for strictly burning so I can easily mutlitask.

Hopefully this may solve any problem I am having. I know one of the hard drives keeps saying it has failed on me so I may call the manufacturer and see about getting it replaced as it is well under warranty.

Anyway hopefully this solves my computer woes.
 
When the free upgrade came was that just an upgrade or a full install version there? That was one thing I was going ask earlier. The temps there wouldn't explain the restarts unless something only heats up temporarily since SpeedFan doesn't show video card temps at all. The top temp seen in SpeedFan is for the cpu with the board second.

But those are all well withing the normal range there. The board may be seeing a fault if the supply isn't seeing power drops at times. A weak battery on an older board can see things this as well.
 
All the parts are less then 6 months old. I should really get around to putting my current build specs in my signature.

My board is an EVGA 680i SLI, which I got when it was relatively new on the market for over $300CDN which you can now get for just over $200CDN I believe.

At any rate I installed a new 250GB WD hard drive disconnected the two 320GB WD hard drives I mentioned I already had. I installed my upgrade (not a full install version), after installing Windows XP MCE first without any problems. I then connected the two 320GB drives again and they showed up with out a problem and the computer automatically boots into Vista as opposed to me getting a screen to choose my OS.

I have not had a restart since and my computer has run noticably better. I am amazed to tell you the truth so I am going to assume it was either an OS problem or a hard drive problem.

I just installed SpeedFan and my CPU is 36C and my MOBO is 39C. Now I just need to figure out how to get it to show my hard drives as I really liked to see that information as well. It is now showing me CoreO and Core1.

Once I get all my files off the two old drives I will use the application you mentioned to wipe and format the 320GB drives and use them for storage.

Cost me $170CDN after takes for the new 250GB hard drive (manufacture packaging, not OEM), because I had to resort to buying it from Future Shop (Canadaian Best Buy equivalent), but it was well worth it.
 
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At least you can now rule out any hardware faults being cause if everything is now running normally. The OS problem could have easily been either Windows or other drivers seeing a clash with something running in the background. If you boot from the upgrade disk you can see if that has the same options as seen with a full version. Look under the "Install Now" button to the bottom half of that screen for repair tools. In the next screen the option to reformat a drive is found there. This is a first for Windows with the ability to both reformat and even resize partitions.

GParted still works great and is also worth having onhand. When seeing where the XP installer left some unused space on drive used here(also WD drives) GParted was used to increase the single primary there to full capacity. That was some 8mb of unallocated space seen by GParted but not with the XP installer? I was asking some questions there.
 
Well I am going to assume one of my 320GB drives is in fact pretty much toast. While I can still access files, when I was transferring files onto my new hard drive I got the blue screen of death however aside from Vista restarting my computer because of that everything else has been working fine.

All my drives are under warranty though so it shouldn't be a problem to get them replaced.
 
A spent drive certainly doesn't help any. With your temps looking good that ruled out a cpu problem right away being the cause for the restarts. Have you noticed any odd sounds like a clicking sound from the case during this time since the restarts began? Often when a drive is going deep six you will hear the read/write heads slapping against the disks(platters) inside the drive itself.
 
No, I haven't really heard any clicking noises which I know was a good thing obviously, however one drive inparticular is sometimes acknowledged and at other times it is while loading.

At the moment it is not be acknowledged, although now that I come to think of it it is the other 320GB drive that is not showing up this time which now causes me some concern.

Since I put the new hard drive in though like I said the shotdowns have ceased. So it has to be the 6 month old drives that are causing beginning to fail. My only concern is what does a retailer or manufacturer consider to be a faulty HDD? I imagine it would have to be totally dead before they would replace it under warranty. Mine just seem to go in and out of working order.

Either way as long as I don't lose all my data (which I have almost completely backed up), and my computer is still working I am pretty much content.
 
Besides a failing drive another thing to consider is one or more cables being a problem. You may want to try a fresh set to see if the vanishing drive problem ceases then. Bad contacts or wires will see intermittent problems. It's noticed more with the typical flat ribbon itype ide cables however. But that's one other thought on this.
 
If you have a bad cable you'll know fast when the disappearing drive suddenly is seen at all times. Fortunately even ordering new cables cost less then getting into some high quality ide round cables that last. The ones in mind here are the Antec Cobra type. You can see a pair of reviews on those at the links here. I'm still waiting to grab an Antec Cobra for floppy while still using a Asus standard ribbon there.

http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/cables/antec_cobra/index.htm

http://www.dvhardware.net/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=31
 
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