Upgrading to XP tonight, formatting drive, starting from scratch, need some help (1 Viewer)

[McPaul]

Alright, I've backed up everything I might need, I've used the "make a system disk" feature that WinME has in the control panel, which made me a floppy with basic dos commands on it.

What is the command that I use to erase the hard drive? is it FDISK? and what syntax? I already tried fdisk c: and it gave me an error. I tried fdisk and it came up with some sort of utility that made a virtual drive or something for me. ??

what is the procedure? I'm lost .... and it's not every day this is done.

 

[John*Jones]

if you have a full version of xp, the CD itself is bootable. you just have to change the boot sequence in the bios to boot off of the cdrom first. after you reboot, xp should start the process itself. you will get to a screen that allows you to set/create/delete partitions and then format.

sorry if i may be telling you something you already know.

good luck

 

[McPaul]

ok, this is new to me, how do i 'change the boot sequence in the bios to boot off the cdrom first'?? It is the full version of XP.

 

[John*Jones]

okay, the specifics vary with the motherboard, but it should be straight forward. when you first boot up your pc you need to press the button specified on the screen to enter bios/setup...it's different key for different motherboards, but it can commonly be the esc key or f2. once you get into the bios, you'll have to navigate to find the boot sequence. for example my motherboard, it is under the "advanced bios features" and lists on the menu first boot device, second boot device, etc. you usually just have to cycle through a list of available options and set the first boot device to the cdrom.

john.

i'll be on for a while

 

[McPaul]

I'll give it a try, I have a Gigabyte motherboard.... 7ga or something like that

 

[John*Jones]

hmm...i'll look up on there website...they'll have a menu that will give you detailed info on the bios.

 

[John*Jones]

oops, i meant manual, not menu

 

[McPaul]

Ah, what do you know, there is a manual for this thing. I'm going to try

btw it's either a GA-7VRX or a GA-7VRXP

according to this little chart

 

[McPaul]

Um..... woah... I wonder what happened in that post!!??


the strikeout text is supposed to say

btw it's either a GA-7VRX or a GA-7VRXP

according to this little chart.

 

[John*Jones]

okay...i forgot that delete is another common key to access the bios

 

[John*Jones]

Here are the links to download those manuals in case you might need it.

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard...-7VRX(2.0).htm

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard...7VRXP(2.0).htm

 

[McPaul]

Hm, no I've got the manual it would seem.

Alright, I got into the BIOS and changed the boot record, then did a soft boot and everything was coming up great, it said "press any key to boot from CD" which I did..... then the WINME startup screen came up, then back to a blank window and "press any key to boot from CD" so I hit spacebar again..... and then my desktop came up.

I do have a cordless keyboard/mouse combo which uses the special logitech drivers..... do you think that could have gave me a problem?

Is there any way to do this?

btw I tried this with my winXP cd in both my CDROM and my DVDROM

 

[John*Jones]

okay, that's strange. you're getting the right screen, but i'm not sure why it's not continuing the install process. i had a logitech cordless keyboard/mouse combo and i never had that problem. don't know what to do about that.

i seem to recall that if you install the cd while in windows, it will give you the option to either upgrade or do a fresh install. this may or may not lead to the option to fdisk/format.

 

[John*Jones]

alright, there is another option. if you have the time and floppy disks, you can create your own xp boot disks. I think you need 4-5 disks

for xp home:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...5-719F45C382A4

for xp professional:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...2-631504EF5E26

 

[McPaul]

Well it worked! I had to try it a third time and finally everything came into place, I have a lot of work ahead of me now, I just wanted to thank you for your time and effort. Now, can you give me any tips that I need to know when upgrading from ME? This is quite different than I'm used to obviously.

Thanks again.

Paul.

 

[Chad Ellinger]

I'm not sure if you had stability problems with ME, but XP should be a much more reliable platform nonetheless.

Expect to be unfamiliar with the interface when you first start. Your Start Menu will look completely different, and your desktop will be empty (except for a Recycle Bin). You can play around with the settings and get XP to look more like a Windows 2000/9x if you like.

 

[John*Jones]

as chad said, xp should be much more reliable/stable. xp has a different look and feel to it. however, there are plenty of options that allow you to revert back to a classic windows look. in the display properties, under the themes tab you can switch it to the classic theme.

here are a few sites that are centered around xp:

http://www.themexp.org

http://www.tweakxp.com

any specific questions you have i'd be more than happy to attempt to answer for you. glad to hear your install went well.

john

 

[McPaul]

Actually I did have tons of stability problems with ME, that's why I bought XP. And it's not like I'm a demanding user either. i really like the interface, although I do think that in a 1024-768 resolution, the taskbar and the titlebars of each window are far too "tall" if that makes sense. I'd like to change that, but otherwise, I got around to all my basic internet needs with no problem, I'm getting faster transfer speeds for things like Winamp and Spybot, and Kazaa lite, when I downloaded them last night. I'll have to dive deeper into it all though. It even recognized my Sony Clie as soon as I put it into the cradle!

My WinME gave me a blue screen of death every second shutdown, and loading a few programs on my taskbar would crash it sometimes too. This is much better.

Thanks I'll bookmark the links there, I've got some other ones from someone else too. I've heard people tell me that I should do a "partition" ... not sure what this is or why I should do it though.

Thanks again guys!

 

[Philip Hamm]

Now, can you give me any tips that I need to know when upgrading from ME? This is quite different than I'm used to obviously.

Be patient, XP is a little different than Me.

I think I may have been one of the only people who had a good experience with Me. Well, my wife's laptop works great with it, too. I went to XP Pro when I got a new PC and I like it a lot better.