Reinstalling XP, a question or two

[Muse]

I'm about to reinstall XP Pro on one of my "desktop" (midtower) boxes. I have two installations of XP on the machine, partitions one and two of the boot drive. The one I want to reinstall on at the moment is the first partition, C:. It's a 30 GB partition, 10 GB free. I really don't want to retain anything. I've backed up what I think I need in Documents and Settings, and don't want to retain anything in the Programs directory. How do I go about doing a fresh install that will be as clean as possible?

I inserted the XP disk and booted to it and it wants to either delete a partition or install on one. I don't see an option to format the partition before installation on it. That's really what I want. Should I boot to the D partition and format the C partition in there and then restart Windows and boot to the XP disk and install on C? I am wondering if Windows will even let me format the C partition (from the D partition) because there are some files in the C root that Windows needs. I'm going to install most of the same applications I'm already running but I don't want any chance that any squirreliness will survive. What is the correct method to use? Should I just delete the C: Programs directory from the D Windows installation and then do the installation?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Usually what I have seen is that I first delete the partition, then create a new one with the same size, and then format/install on that new one.

 

[Muse]

Usually what I have seen is that I first delete the partition, then create a new one with the same size, and then format/install on that new one.

I can do that all from the XP setup routine? It won't interfere with the other partitions? Thanks!

 

[Muse]

What the hell, I'll try it. I Ghosted the C: partition, so I suppose I can restore it if I need to. Even if not, I have what I'm concerned about backed up to a different HD, so even if I have to fresh install Windows on both boot install partitions, I'll be OK.

 

[Muse]

I installed on C: but I get no boot menu when I restart the computer. IOW, the Windows installation I just made is ignoring the 2nd installation. How can I fix this? :\ Damn, I should have backed up my boot.ini file. I don't think I have a backup of it. It might not have worked with that anyway, but it would be nice to see what I had there...

 

[Muse]

I searched and found a boot.ini file that was from my XP dual boot adventures. The other ones I had were from Windows 2000. Either the syntax has changed or I screwed up the adaptation of the Windows 2000 boot.ini dual boot file that I saved. Could easily be the latter. Just a little mistake in that file made the entire system unusable! Well, it's working now, using my boot.ini backup. It goes like this:

- - - -
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional on C:" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional on D:" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


- - - -

The only reason I had this was that Partition Magic 7.0 automatically created it. It was not because of my thoughtfulness or resourcefulness. Got lucky there.

Edit: Somehow the contents of the boot.ini file when pasted in here don't look right, but the file's OK and I'm currently using my old D XP Pro installation. I thought I might never be able to access it again. Took me around 7 hours to fix the problem.

The mistake I made was assuming that Windows would automatically create a boot loader for me. It usually does, but in this instance it failed to. Then I couldn't find a way to create one. Worse, when I screwed up the boot.ini file (trying manually to recreate the boot loader), I couldn't boot to either Windows! Nutty stuff.