M
miskairal
I've searched the net high and low and can't find out how I should go
about this.
The short version
XP home SP1 on C
XP home SP2 on D ->dual boot created with boot.ini on C
I want to format and reinstall XP with SP3 on C. How do I do this?
The long version
My aged pc came with xp home SP1 installed. When SP2 came out I
installed it but had major problems (windows explorer wouldn't do any
file operations amongst other things) so I patitioned the drive,
formatted and went back to SP1 until I could sort out the mess.
A few months later I got a new hard drive and was also able to make a
copy of an xp home CD with SP2 already included so I partitioned the new
hard drive and installed xp SP2 in the first partition which all worked
perfectly first go.
From this I have a dual boot system of XP SP1 on C: (which I never use
but contains the boot.ini) and XP SP2 on D: which I made the default
startup OS.
I installed SP3 on D: a couple of months ago but again had major
problems so uninstalled it from within safe mode and all is good however
I have been running XP for years now without a clean install and it's
starting to slow a little (I try out many programs ie. lots of installs
and uninstalls). I really want to format and start afresh but would like
to have access to my current XP on D: in case things go wrong with the
SP3 installation.
So currently when I boot to XP SP2 on D I have
C - XP SP1 files on it
D - XP SP2
E - data (same hard drive as C)
F - data backup (same hard drive as D)
Can I format C and reinstall XP (updating it to SP3 hopefully) without
affecting the dual boot setup? If so, how should I go about it?
If not, can I format and reinstall XP on D but still have access to C's
old OS so I can get internet access if I have problems with the SP3
installation. I assume I setup the 2nd hard drive as a slave but it was
years ago and am not sure unless I pull my pc apart.
Thanks for your time.
about this.
The short version
XP home SP1 on C
XP home SP2 on D ->dual boot created with boot.ini on C
I want to format and reinstall XP with SP3 on C. How do I do this?
The long version
My aged pc came with xp home SP1 installed. When SP2 came out I
installed it but had major problems (windows explorer wouldn't do any
file operations amongst other things) so I patitioned the drive,
formatted and went back to SP1 until I could sort out the mess.
A few months later I got a new hard drive and was also able to make a
copy of an xp home CD with SP2 already included so I partitioned the new
hard drive and installed xp SP2 in the first partition which all worked
perfectly first go.
From this I have a dual boot system of XP SP1 on C: (which I never use
but contains the boot.ini) and XP SP2 on D: which I made the default
startup OS.
I installed SP3 on D: a couple of months ago but again had major
problems so uninstalled it from within safe mode and all is good however
I have been running XP for years now without a clean install and it's
starting to slow a little (I try out many programs ie. lots of installs
and uninstalls). I really want to format and start afresh but would like
to have access to my current XP on D: in case things go wrong with the
SP3 installation.
So currently when I boot to XP SP2 on D I have
C - XP SP1 files on it
D - XP SP2
E - data (same hard drive as C)
F - data backup (same hard drive as D)
Can I format C and reinstall XP (updating it to SP3 hopefully) without
affecting the dual boot setup? If so, how should I go about it?
If not, can I format and reinstall XP on D but still have access to C's
old OS so I can get internet access if I have problems with the SP3
installation. I assume I setup the 2nd hard drive as a slave but it was
years ago and am not sure unless I pull my pc apart.
Thanks for your time.
