Reinstalling Windows XP Professional
My hard drive is making the weirdest noises lately and I'm constantly living in fear of the big hard drive crash with all my life along with it. Yeah, I know, I'm pathetic. But with 30 Gigs of pictures, email dating back to 2001, a giant email address book, resumes, cover letters, company research, and everything else I can't think of all being stored in one place would be really inconvenient to lose.
So I went out and bought a Western Digital 160GB IDE hard drive for $70 two nights ago. I found out that IDE is the old standard and SATA is what everyone is using. No worries though, they still have lots of the old in stock.
I got home began the process of doing a fresh install of Windows XP Professional. Mine was one of the original copies given to me in the spring of 2002.
Install Hard Drive
This was simple. Open up the box and find a spot to put the drive. Keep in mind you will need to use the IDE cable and there are typically only 2 and you haveto share them (2 devices on each one). You will want to find the extra cable connector and then find the extra power plugin and mount your hard drive so that both of these will reach.
You will also need to set you hardrive jumpers to Master or Slave if you are going to be sharing the IDE cable. If there was already another hard drive or DVD drive hooked up, then you will probably need to set it to Slave.
You Need to Disconnect Your Old Hard Drive
If there is already a Windows XP installation on the other hard drive, then you need to disconnect it. I just pull the power plugin out. Otherwise, when you try to do the install later, it can see the other Windows installation and stop you.
BIOS Settings
Reboot your computer and then go into your BIOS settings by hitting Delete or F1 when it is counting up your memory. You need to go find your hard drive settings. Most BIOS's now can auto-detect, but you might need to specify your drive.
Boot Your Computer
If you computer is capable of booting from a CD then you are good to go. Put you Windows XP Pro CD in the drive and boot the computer. If not, you will need to get a floppy disk with the boot files on them and a CD driver. You can Google to find these.
Once you are into your installation, it is pretty much straightforward from there. Just pick your settings and hit Next,Continue, Finish, or whatever until you're done.
When it's done, you reboot and login to XP for the first time.
Updates Galore
This is the long part. I had to apply updates 4 different times and each one takes a little while. The first time I booted into Windows XP, I ran Windows Update (in the Programs menu) and downloaded around 20 updates. Reboot. Then downloaded only a couple updates. Reboot. Then downloaded 76 updates, including Service Pack 2 and the .NET Framework. Reboot. Downloaded 5. And then I was done.
What a long process. If you are buying XP for the first time (chances are you aren't because Vista is coming out right away), I would definitely recommend making sure you have the Service Pack 2 edition already. This will save you some hours of pulling updates.
Afterwards
Lots to set up after the fact. I had to do the following.
- Turn off the computer. Plug in the power to the old hard drive and boot up. had to make sure the old hard drive wasn't the "booting" hard drive.
- Copy all important files from old hard drive to the new one.
- Set up a user account with a password and enable Remote Desktop Connection for it.
- Install latest drivers for any products I'm using (monitor,printer,ATI card,NVidia card, etc.)
- Download my favorite apps...namely
- Change my monitor settings. Make sure you set the refresh rate to the highest possible one. It's easier on the eyes. I always have mine at 1024X768 at 75Hz refresh.
- Set up all my other little settings in Windows. There is a lot.
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe for email updates. Only one email a day and only if there was a new post.
I Need A New Computer
Streaming Video On The PSP
Getting Music Off An Ipod
Acer Extensa 5420 Laptop Review
Getting Frets On Fire Working On Windows XP
Category: Computers
0 Comments
No approved comments yet.