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Topic: Instruction for wipe and reload OS |
Steven Welborn
From:
Ojai,CA USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2004 12:49 pm |
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Anyone know a good site providing clear instuction to wipe and reload the operatining system. I just had a pro shop do it and wound up with the original "Windows 98". I HAD 98+ before. Perhaps this why my Audigy 2 SB soundcard is running afoul. Audigy 2 SB requires 98SE,ME, XP,Etc.
Anycase, Im concidering doing it all over again MYSELF and upgrade to XP. Thanks, Steven |
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Everett Cox
From:
Marengo, OH, USA (deceased)
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Doug Ferguson
From:
Burnet, Texas, USA
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Posted 29 Jul 2004 8:40 am
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Steve, this may be too litle too late for you but I have a piece of advice about upgrading to XP. If you have the Windows 98+ cd, you can use the Windows XP cd to do a full install--not an upgrade. I never recommend upgrading as you may still have problems that caused you to want to upgrade, laying there under the surface of your new os waiting to cause problems. Using the XP upgrade cd to do a full install is really easy. It will usually ask you for an OEM disk of a previous OS which is why I said "if" you have the Win 98 cd. I usually do it this way:
Make a 98 startup floppy while you still can. (go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add Remove Programs, and the Startup Disk Tab and follow directions.) Assuming you have backed up all your data that you want to keep before hand, insert the floppy and boot the computer with the floppy. Once you have the A prompt, type fdisk and remove the partition (s) and then add a single partition. It will tell you that you need to restart before you can format the drive. Restart and again when you are at the A prompt, type format c: and let it format the drive. This will give your XP disk a clean slate to start from. Then use the XP cd to boot from and run the setup program. It will at some point, ask you to show it the 98 cd to verify that you qualify to use the XP upgrade cd to do a full install, then it goes on with the install. It really isn't terribly complicated, of course, I've done it 100's of times so it's like old hat to me. I'll be glad to coach if anyone needs help!
Doug
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Fergy, MSA Classic D12 |
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Don Olson
From:
Muscatine,Ia. USA
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Posted 29 Jul 2004 5:28 pm
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I have a Dumb question,what is the purpose of a partion ? I have a Laptop with a 4 gig hard drive it is partioned with 2 gig on C drive and 2 gig on D drive I have Win 98se and by the time I install the OS and Virus protection I am about out of Memory on C drive.How can I do away with this partition so I have all 4 gig on C drive?
Don |
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Doug Ferguson
From:
Burnet, Texas, USA
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Posted 30 Jul 2004 11:31 am
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I should have addressed that in my previous post. In my opinion, having multiple partitions is basically a waste of time and space for most people. I've seen a 10 gb drive partitioned into four 2 gb drives on an HP computer. Customer came to me and was out of space on her computer. The D, E and F drives had never been touched.
I always remove all partitions when I'm wiping and reloading a computer and just set up one partition. That's when I'm wiping and reloading. I have used a tool that a customer brought me once, that removed partitions and made the drive one partition, without losing any data. The application was called Symantec Partition Magic. It's been a while so I couldn't tell you much about the program, but that it worked and was easy enough for me to read and follow directions!
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Fergy, MSA Classic D12 |
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John Kaigley
From:
Decatur, Illinois, USA
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Posted 30 Jul 2004 2:05 pm
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| The only advantage I can think of, if the user understands how to use it, is that with a second partition (D Drive) you have a place for data seperate from the OS. I use "Drive Image" to do backups. System partition to "D" then the second partition to another network drive. A HDD failure is a 30 minute fix. A corrupt operating system can be wiped and data still be intact, too. I usually patition about 80% to system and 20% extended. |
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Jeff Agnew
From:
Dallas, TX
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Posted 2 Aug 2004 4:26 am
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There are several advantages to partitioning a large drive. Whether they matter to you depends on how you use the drive.
The primary advantage is that partitioning reduces the size of the minimum allocation block. That's a fancy term that describes how a computer writes data to the disk. Think of it like this:
Let's say you have a 100MB disk. Due to the way hard drives are formatted, data is written to them in sectors. Within the sectors are blocks. Addresses, if you will, like a street address and house number. (This is a gross oversimplification, but bear with me.) These sectors, or blocks, represent physical chunks on the disk and tell your computer where to locate files. For the sake of argument, assume that the minimum block size on this disk is 10K. Only one piece of data can reside within the block.
Let's say you save a 32KB file to disk. Obviously, it will not fit evenly into three blocks. So it instead occupies four, wasting 8K of space.
Due to technical reasons I won't bore you with, large hard drives have correspondingly large file allocation blocks. Using the file example from above, let's assume you now have a 1GB drive with a minimum allocation block size of 100K. That 32KB file will fit entirely within the block, but you'll have 68KB of wasted space.
I'm grossly exaggerating these numbers so the concept is easier to understand. But the concept is valid; there is more slack space (wasted space) on large partitions/drives. This becomes an issue when users save lots of relatively small files frequently. In other words, the way most people use computers.
For specialized situations, such as manipulating large digital audio and video files, partitioning can actually slow things down. These users need a very fast drive that is as big as possible. Another approach is to write simultaneously to many smaller drives (RAID). The average user doesn't need this type of setup or power.
Other reasons for partitioning include: better performance, data safety and integrity, ease of backup, booting to multiple operating systems, and security.
There's no hard and fast rule for determining at which size you should partition a drive. But based on our needs and usage, company policy specifies that we partition any drive larger than 40GB. YMMV. |
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Don Olson
From:
Muscatine,Ia. USA
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Posted 2 Aug 2004 5:13 pm
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Thanks for the Info Jeff very informative.
Don |
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