HELP with total computer overhaul

[Stretchomatic]

g'day everyone, my computer lately has been a complete crap heap and after backing my pictures and songs on another hard drive i want to totally reboot the whole system and take it back to square one.
now i have got the Windows XP home edition disk, but i dont think it is what i use to reboot, can anyone tell me how to completely wipe and re-install my home edition? (its one of the things i can't do).
thanks in advance. Stretch

[Stretchomatic]

anyone?...

[gopher]

windows xp disc is what i used to reboot once before
but i don't remember exactly what i did i think it has an option to do a fresh install on it

[Stretchomatic]

yer i've used the xp disc but it restarts then claims that i'm missing some 'sr' file or something, i friggin hate these computers!!! nothing is simple.

[stocky]

format your drive, set cd rom as your first boot drive in the bios settings, insert windows cd, and reinstall windows

[Stretchomatic]

ahhh, so when i restart i go into the settings and switch it there, how do i set the cd rom, do i hav to first take it off the floppy?
yer as u probly guessed i'm good at stuffing computers...not fixing...lol.






format your drive, set cd rom as your first boot drive in the bios settings, insert windows cd, and reinstall windows

[hinterland]

when booting hold the del button will put you into bios go to second option usually and be able to change boot from cd rom there instead of floppy h/d if you fale there just reinstal from windows will copy files to h/d and give you option to format the drive further down the instalation prosses if you have big h/d it has option to make partition do that and when done install new opp sys on that partition.

[VS Omega]

When you just turn the computer on it might say something about either pushing delete of F2 or some other key to enter the "BIOS". This is where you can change the boot order, nothing wrong with booting from a floppy but you're not needing one of those so you'll need to sort a way to make it boot to the CD-ROM drive first (or at least before the hard drive). Once you do this and pop have your disc in the computer will start up and it will see if the disc in the drive can be booted from, and because the windows disc is bootable it will start with that before the broken Windows, once here just follow the instructions and it should be pretty straight forward, if you have any more questions about anything just let us know, we love helping


edit: argh I keep getting beaten, must remember to type quicker

[Stretchomatic]

cheers guys, i'll have to say thanks to stocky as i got the reboot to work after reading his post and have been re-installing everything since then, so sorry juzza and hinterland, but thanks...new prob though, one i have ficxed before but forgotten how...when i startup it has the 'optima' screen come up as usual, then it has 'select which operating system you wish to use' or wateva, i wanna get rid of the second one.

i'm guessing that its there cos the reboot didnt completely delete the old operating system...
cheers

[stocky]

there is a file called boot.ini on the C drive, you can edit it there,

or for the easy way, go to start, run, type in msconfig, and find the boot settings in that program

[VS Omega]

What he said --^

Don't edit the boot.ini file by hand if you don't know what you're doing. Better to use the MSCONFIG that he mentioned

[Stretchomatic]

i have seen it done through msconfig, (work experience at computer place, woohoo) but it comes up with two options and i dunno how to delete the bottom one, but then i also think i might wreck everything by deleting it, so maybe i'll live with it...
cheers

[stocky]

yeah to actually remove it you would have to edit the file itself in notepad/wordpad. just open it in wordpad and remove whatever OS entry you dont want it to show. not too hard. make a backup copy of the file just incase

or you could just set the timeout to 1-3 seconds so that the screen only shows for a second

[Stretchomatic]

yep cool i was thinking that may be the quickest way around it, thaks again stocky.

[DavoTheGreat]

The boot.ini file should look like this.. (without the asterisks)

*********************

[boot loader]
timeout=0

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

******************

Or if you have the recovery console enabled then add this line to the end.

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

[holdensupporter2005]

Try this site:
A Step By Step Guide To Installing Windows XP

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...p_sg_clean.asp

Scroll down to the green Heading that says (Step-by-Step: Clean installing Windows XP (Interactive Setup)).

and just follow the instructions. Easy as. I do this at least a dozen times a day.