Re: Total nightmare with XP remove & reinstall
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:47:41 -0400
thomas@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
<<snip>>
I should note that I absolutely hate XP.
<<snip>>
Tom
Apparently, it is possible to copy the i386 folder off the CDROM and
onto a hard drive. If you boot up with some kind of DOS disk, you can
execute "winnt" from the i386 directory, and install from the hard drive.
That option, would be useful if you wanted to avoid the CD during the
install. (I've never done this, and there might be better pages than
this one, for a procedure. You could use a small partition, to hold
the copy of i386, leaving the rest of the disk for the actual install.
And if you needed a boot disk, bootdisk.com has some different ones
for download.)
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/dosinstalling.html
If you're curious, you might get a copy of memtest86+ from memtest.org
and make yourself a test floppy. Test to see if the memory on the
computer is good or not. Memtest86+ tests virtually all the memory
(only some reserved areas are not tested). Testing the memory while in
Windows, misses the part used to hold the OS. It could be that bad
memory is making the computer misbehave. I've had memory go bad, after
a year of usage, so memory does fail while in use.
Another test tool in the arsenal, is a copy of Knoppix (knopper.net)
or Ubuntu. These are "Linux Live" distros, meaning they don't need
to install any software to work. Basically, you boot from the CD,
and voila, end up with a Linux desktop. The important part of this
procedure, is the fact that it initializes all the hardware it can
find, and if you don't get any errors or crashes, then you know the
hardware might not totally be at fault. You don't even need a hard
drive connected, while booted from the CD. Such a CD makes a good
test case, if you want to figure out if the computer is healthy
or not (or that the CD drive works -- Knoppix even has a boot time
option to verify the CD contents). Either of the above mentioned distros,
is in the form of an ISO9660 file, 700MB in size. It is a long download
on broadband, and a bit too big if you are on dialup.
HTH,
Paul
.
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