I am going to bit the bullet. I am dying about every 20 minutes and it's time. I have a P4S333 mother board by ASUS. I also have Windows XP PRO.

If anyone could give me an organized order to follow with a few tips on reformatting and reinstalling XP, I would really appreciate it. THe last time I did this, I ended up with F: instead of C: as my main drive. Something about partitions that I didn't do. My system by the way is not a name brand but a good one in any case.

The processor is an intel Pentium 4, at 2 gig.

The Socket set is 478 mPGA

Memory is DDR 768MB

Any help would be appreciated. John

here's a good guide: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Read it as its useful to know, especially the "XP Clean Install" for you. See if you understand it and can follow it and thats all there is to it.

Thats if your sure you want to clean install Windows. Be warned that you'll lose everything on there.

The drive letter is chosen by you yourself. If you choose drive C when it asks you where to install windows it will be on there. If you choose another, it will be named another. Make sure to have drive C as your primary/master drive before installation as well. If you have another set as Master, it may register as C and this as D (what happened with me )

So if I have all my files backed up and have the original programs to reinstall them, I should be ok.

I went to the site you mentioned and there seemed to be too much information. I actually am having a hard time figuring out what to do first assuming I want to do a clean install.

For example, do I have to run the upgrade advisor if I am doing a clean install?

I can boot from CD so to start, what CD should I have in the drive to get started? The XP Pro CD?

Sorry to be such a dummy but I don't do this every day and have always been in the dark when it comes to building an OS from scratch.

John

yes, you should have the xp pro cd in the drive, boot to cd and baisically follow the on-screen instructions

If i remember correctly, you press enter to install win XP, press enter again, chose what partiton/drive to install it on and then it starts

**PLEASE READ THE SCREENS BEFORE PRESSING ENTER WHERE I HAVE SAID AS I HAVNT DONE IT FOR A WHILE**

If you require clearer instructions, i will post them tomorrow as i am hopefully going to perform one myself (new mobo arriving)

if your HDD is partitioned into more than one drive, a clean install will not change this.

Hope this helps,
Mike

Michael Steven's site can be a bit overwhelming as he covers almost every possibility. The basics are listed here from his line: Click here to skip to "Steps to Clean Install XP"

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html#steps

Basically as the others have said after you boot the CD just follow the prompts. It is fairly self explanatory.

Let us know if we can help further.

I assume then that somewhere along the instal, XP reformats the hard drive or is this not done? Yes, I wouldn't mine instructions if you don't mind sending them.

Since you are getting a new motherboard, I am looking for one also. I use excel, word, powerpoint, wordperfect and frontpage. I also game a fair amount. Any suggestions as to what to buy. I specified the P4S333 when it first came out.

John

If you choose to use only one partition on the hard drive (which I recommend) then yes XP will format the entire hard drive.

If you choose to use existing partitions and or desire to create partitions then XP will only format the partition that you are installing to i.e. C:

It hasn't really been stated yet so for clarity,,,, Once you've chosen the partition where you want to install XP, the setup will ask you if you want to;

format as NTFS
format as FAT32
leave the partition as it is

I suggest a format to really 'scrub' the partition. The choice of the file system (NTFS or FAT32) is up to you. If your partitions are over 8GB, I suggest NTFS as you will retain a 4KB cluster size, which is good relative to drive 'slack space'.