You know how to do things? Since when?!

You know you can't reformat Windows XP machines, unless you go straight into the command prompt from a bootdisk, make sure you have a bootable CDROM / DVDROM, also insure you have FDISK, and FORMAT.COM on floppy,

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" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."

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Originally posted by Rostros You know you can't reformat Windows XP machines, unless you go straight into the command prompt from a bootdisk, make sure you have a bootable CDROM / DVDROM, also insure you have FDISK, and FORMAT.COM on floppy,

bootdisk? floppy? those still exist? you serious????

anyways, let me geek out for a minute

i suggest you don't format your drive if you want to recover SOME of your data. How to do it? Go out and get yourself a small HD, something cheap, and pull out the old one and put in the new one.

In the BIOS, set the startup to read the CDROM first and pop in your XP CD. It'll auto-run and you go ahead and install XP yadda yadda yadda. Then when the install is fully complete, pop in the old HD in the Slave slot (change the jumpers) and make sure the BIOS runs off the XP installed on the new HD. You're old HD will be viewable as a drive (some letter:\) copy all your data over to the new disk and then format the old disk. Move all your data back to the old formatted disk and now you have an OS Drive (skratch disk) and a data disk w/out an OS on it.

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quote:

Originally posted by kid nyce bootdisk? floppy? those still exist? you serious???? anyways, let me geek out for a minute i suggest you don't format your drive if you want to recover SOME of your data. How to do it? Go out and get yourself a small HD, something cheap, and pull out the old one and put in the new one. In the BIOS, set the startup to read the CDROM first and pop in your XP CD. It'll auto-run and you go ahead and install XP yadda yadda yadda. Then when the install is fully complete, pop in the old HD in the Slave slot (change the jumpers) and make sure the BIOS runs off the XP installed on the new HD. You're old HD will be viewable as a drive (some letter:\) copy all your data over to the new disk and then format the old disk. Move all your data back to the old formatted disk and now you have an OS Drive (skratch disk) and a data disk w/out an OS on it.

Not all system's will Boot XP form the CD Rom, If your formating the drive as the guy wants to, then he prob will wipe his Device Settings / Driver for his CDROM,

Yes your right, you can just stick a new HDD drive in and change the Master > Slave but thats a lot of copying files over, mostly crap that has been saved in the windows System folders from installed applications, Ive been building systems for ages now, depending on the volume of data, i would just back up Onto DVD/RW or buy an external 250Gb HDD, pref USB.

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" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."

always create two partitions. one for the operative system and one for all your files. if the operative system malfunctions, you just have to reinstall on one partition, not the other one. and if you're short on hdd space, buy an external drive, as someone in this thread said earlier.

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i sorted my shitness out 2 weeks ago & it's running so much better. dvd-writers ftw

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Originally posted by Ian i sorted my shitness out 2 weeks ago

I just reformatted as well after buying a 160GB hdd to backup my important data and I am much happier with things now

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Originally posted by UWM I just reformatted as well after buying a 160GB hdd to backup my important data and I am much happier with things now

aye. i'm going to eventually get a hdd just for data, partition mine to leave a good page file & then keep all the shit away from it. It's funny though how much you forget how good the system can be.

quote:

Originally posted by Rostros Not all system's will Boot XP form the CD Rom, If your formating the drive as the guy wants to, then he prob will wipe his Device Settings / Driver for his CDROM, Yes your right, you can just stick a new HDD drive in and change the Master > Slave but thats a lot of copying files over, mostly crap that has been saved in the windows System folders from installed applications, Ive been building systems for ages now, depending on the volume of data, i would just back up Onto DVD/RW or buy an external 250Gb HDD, pref USB.

I'm not sure how many other "systems" there are LOL.

A computer is a computer, either its a pc or a mac.
The PLATFORM (OS) can be different (linux, unix, bsd, windows, etc) and from what I know of most is that a CD-ROM DRIVER is as common as plugging in a mouse into a ps2/usb slot. It's included in ALL XP CDs. Book Disks are archaic, unless you are speaking in the 486/386 years where GHz did not exist. Any "SYSTEM" capable of running XP should have a BIOS that is modern enough to assign boot sequence on-start. And by assigning the boot sequence you can boot directly off an XP CD (XP is made to be cd-bootable). I'm a senior business analyst with a degree in MIS and I have a plethora of IT Experience (not that I'm fluffing my feathers) but I hate to give advice and then be instructed that there are alternatives (of course technology these days there always are alternatives) but when it comes to something as simple as reformatting, I think my experience in reformats warrant me some justification for my guidelines.

i'm just trying to help him dude, i guess it's better to not consider my suggestions as I have no idea what the hell i am talking about...

computer what the hell is that..TYPEWRITER BITCHES

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I PUT TRADEMARKS AROUND YO MOTHAFUCKIN EYE
JUST ME N YOU

thanks for the huge help. i think im going to buy an external harddrive, and import my files onto there. i was going to copy everything onto cd-r

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Error messages suggest it could also be a memory issue. I used to have huge issues, replced the RAM under warranty and all the errors stopped...

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Mikey Mike Social outcasts are often of the opinion that they must have a drink before being able to loosen up with their inhibitions, thus being able to have a good time. There's a word that sums up this sort of behaviour, and that word is 'reject.'