Help loading XP clean install

Post by **VelvetGeorge** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 10:21 pm

Thanks for replying. I know only enough to f**k things up.

Right now I'm trying to get these steps to work:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Just something I googled.

I have made an essentials boot disk and I even got XP to start installing once. But it started having errors copting files.

A few questions:

should I not have the drive partitioned when I begin the XP install? I assume it will tak care of that during the process???

interesting that you mention the CD rom drivers. The last few tries, it wouldn't read the CD in the drive.

I'll keep plugging away. Sorry to bore you guys with this crap. maybe I'll learn something before I'm done.

Oh yeah, my JTM 45/100 arrived today, but this shit is keeping me away from it. F**K

George

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:55 pm

Ok George, try this before you go further.

Open Nero, click cancel to any wizard that happens to open. Once at the main program screen click on recorder. Then Click burn image, then it will ask what/where the image is that you want to burn. Navigate to the iso. Allow it to burn the iso that way.

What seems like happened was taht you burned the iso and it reburned the iso not what the iso had within it. Ive lunched several disks for things in the past this way.

Once you have the iso burned as I described above, test it in your good computer. Just open the drive then reclose it with the newly burned disk. If it was a solid burn you should then have the XP window open up asking if you want to see if you can install xp on this computer etc.... Exit out of that after you affirm that the disk is good.

Once you do that then place the disk in the computer you want to install xp to and reboot(cold boot, shut it all the way down then restart with the disk in the drive) let it re partition and format the drive unless you need it to be in a specific place. It should install XP afterwards.

Post by **VelvetGeorge** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 12:24 am

Great. I will try this. And thanks a million.

George

Post by **VelvetGeorge** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:40 am

3:40 AM just installed and first post.

I'm going to bed......

George

NitroLiq · Post by **NitroLiq** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 10:16 am

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. So, the problem was that the ISO itself was burned to CD rather than being burnt as an image? I've had IT send me the same thing once...I should've recognized it but it sounded like you're drive was even recognizing the CD itself. Ah well...

You probably already know this now but to answer your earlier question, yes, the drive can be partitioned already before you install XP. Actually, it's preferred if you have a larger drive....store your OS and programs on the C partition, then divvy up the rest of the drive for files so on the odd occasion you do get some nasty intrusions or have to format/reinstall the OS, you can just format the one partition and your files are still intact....though you'll still have to re-install all your apps because of how they're tied in to the OS and registry.

Just as an aside, if try to take this HD out and plop it into another machine, you may have issues with it working as the hardware keys between the two machines will be different. Also might be worthwhile to look into a good system backup/restore app like Norton Ghost.

Pete

Post by **VelvetGeorge** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 12:22 pm

Good points Pete. I let setup format the entire drive as NTFS for now. It's an 80gig drive. All of the metroamp.com stuff is on a seperate external drive via USB 2.0

I will get Ghost for restore purposes. I've seen it save comps after some major corruption.

This has been a real PITA, but I should have done something all those times had trouble in the past. Lesson learned. And I now how to install from scratch now.

George

NitroLiq · Post by **NitroLiq** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:05 pm

It's also one of those things that while it's a PITA going through at the time, you learn alot for the next time. I could tell you some horror stories...

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 7:38 pm

Heh try having a drive fail and the data on it is non replaceable so you have to open up the drive and hand spin the plates to get the data read off the drive.

NitroLiq · Post by **NitroLiq** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 8:39 pm

Yikes. Fortunately, I haven't had that happen but back when I was first learning about the ups and downs of PCs, I tried setting up a dual-boot system, adding NT to my win 95 machine...well, I botched the NT install and in a panic started deleting partially installed files...including the NT loader file! Took me like 5 hrs on on an old mac powerbook chatting with some techie friends before I could even boot out of DOS....nightmare!

A couple years ago I built my first computer after having sourced everything...worked beautifully, then after awhile all this strange crap started happening....it would type by itself....apps would open and close...resources were hogged...did mad amounts of troubleshooting...really sounded like a virus...was about to wipe and reinstall the whole drive but someone mentioned something that happened to him...and it turned out to be the same thing....my viewsonic multimedia USB keyboard was malfunctioning....never would've guessed.

Last spring, my homebuilt just went squirrelly and I troubleshot everything by myself, on forums, with techie friends...none of us could figure out what was going on...lan connection stopped working on my mobo then all these random things started happening...went through and tested everything.....was getting HD smart failure alerts...all this stuff. Ended up buying a replacement mobo, new HD...and extra ram while I was at it...heh. I transferred everything from the old drive before it crapped out...sent the faulty one back as it was still under warranty...the new one is still sitting in a box under my desk. That nonesense went on for like a month-and-a-half...no internet at home. It was making me twitchy.

Necrovore · Post by **Necrovore** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:19 pm

I just got done figuring out that my wifi card on my pc was having major conflicts with the VIA chipset on my mobo. random stalls, countless softboots, finally decided to take a try at just using a standard pci nic card. so far no lockups without me actually causing it. before I was lucky to stay up and running a half hour straight, my system has not shut off for the past week. Been running it constantly to include SETI@home just to try and get it to stall out.

Beware the Netgear product.....

MacGaden · Post by **MacGaden** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:05 pm

Hi George:

And don´t forget all the SP´s, especially SP2, hotfixes and whatnot Windoze need to be reasonably secure. Don´t forget the firewall and virus protection.

Unprotected WinXP SP1 time before hacked: 12 minutes if left unprotected...

rockstah · Post by **rockstah** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:13 pm

i had to finally purchase my xp pro MS figured out i had a cracked version and i couldnt update any further

i purchased oem version of xp pro for 89 bucks compared to the 199 of retail - oem at any comp store, they wont offer it of course but you could go buy a 2 dollor bottle of thermal grease and ask for a oem version of xp pro 89 bucks done!

oem usually comes with a store bought computer and the thing you dont get with a oem version is NO tech support - i can deal with that

you can also buy oem version online for the same money - do a search for oem xp