reinstalling fresh xp.. w/o formatting??

[randomlinh]

my main drive is 80GB, the secondary is 40GB. the 40GB is close to full, and the main drive has 20GB or so of media that i wont' want deleted.... but i want a fresh install of xp w/ no reference to users/files/registry/etc from the old install (say, i upgrade mobo, just want to do a fresh install).

question is, what would be the best way of doing this? Don't really want to install in another directory.. even so, i think xp will find the old version and pull stuff over. can you run from the command prompt and delete the windows directory (the emergency recovery console rather.. the one you can access from the xp boot cd)???

Appriciate any thought on this. Other than the obvious of finding a backup solution and copy back. I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

Linh

 

[bozo1]

Just reinstall XP to your C: drive - don't let it do any partitioning/formatting, etc. It will just wipe your \windows directory and nothing else. You will have to reinstall your apps, etc., after the install.

 

[randomlinh]

does it wipe it? and the users too... i remember win2k would append the users w/ ".computername" and it tried to keep half the files from the old windows.. which is why i was curious about xp.

Thanks
Linh

 

[JackMDS]

I think that WinXP installation is better designed then the previous upgrades

I have few systems that are fresh installed (Win XP Pro), and few that are over Win98se. I don?t see any difference in the way they perform.

Win98 applications that were written few years ago are better off in an upgrade system, since it maintain the old support files. On the other hand there are utilities (like Mother Board Monitor) that have to be uninstalled, and reinstalled. Since they load different files in WinXP.