Need help- First attempt at installing Windows

[1sikbITCH]

Ok my Windows 2000 install has lasted over a year and has been absolutely flawless. I am quite abusive with the installing/ uninstalling and it held up wonderfully.
Now, though, it's finally getting a little buggy. I have both Win2000 and XP CD's. I also have Partition Magic. I have an SB Live soundcard, and for now, I have a Kyro II (save the jokes plz ). I have been seeing a lot of people having driver issues with XP. Should I reinstall 2000 or will XP not be such a headache?
Next question- I have watched my friend install windows a few times but most of the times I was basically just in the room with him. I don't have a super grasp of all the little things.
Is this going to be self-explanatory? What information do I need before I wipe my hard drive? I know to have all the drivers ready but are there settings and things I will need to just know that the Windows Install won't prompt me for? I will search for info too but I know the regulars on this board are as knowledgable as any about this stuff. Any tips or links that will help me would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[minendo]

<< Is this going to be self-explanatory? >>


Yes.

You really dont even need to use Partition Magic because you can do the partitioning through the win2k or winXP setup. All you need to do is set your CDRom as the first boot device and then insert one of the two OS cds and you are good to go.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Ok thx.
Next question- I'm pretty sure that Partition Magic walks you thru the formatting of the harddrive. If I didn't use Partition Magic, how would I go about formatting C? I'm guessing I need to make a new drive letter to store my files I want to save first and then give a format command in Dos?

 

[dexmanone]

If you dont have onboard sound or video you should have the disks for those handy. I dont know about 2000 or xp but 98 only loads basic. Sometimes not enough to load the other programs until you get the resolution set up right, from recent experience. In my case I had to load the software for my vid card and load other stuff for my board to read some of the other hardware before I could start restoring my stuff.


Good Luck!

 

[Mje]

The easiest way (imho) is to go into fdisk through dos and delete your partition(where you will be installing xp). Then when you go through the XP setup it will walk you through formatting and partitioning the drive.

 

[Bglad]

FDISK doesn't work with NTFS. He's running 2k and talking about XP. If he switched to NTFS, FDISK is not an option.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Thx guys. I still have a few days of burning mp3's (I need the disk space anyway) and downloading drivers so I'll keep checking this.