[arts]

I have no idea what I'm doing so please bear with me. I have an IBM Thinkpad that is in need of a clean start. The problem is that I have NT as well as XP Professional on it. I also have three partitions. It would appear that XP is located on F and NT on C. Can I somehow just reformat The F drive which has the XP on it? The XP is an upgrade and not a full install disk. If I can how would I do it? Thanks

[shanenin]

I am pretty certain if you run the XP installer it will give you the option to format only the f driving and then you can reinstall XP pro in that same location.

[arts]

shanenin, on 06 February 2010 - 06:10 PM, said:

I am pretty certain if you run the XP installer it will give you the option to format only the f driving and then you can reinstall XP pro in that same location.

[arts]

Okay I can give it a try. I assume that since I want to reformat the drive that has the XP on it an not the NT I should put the XP disk in. I've saved all my drivers is there anything else I should do first?

[shanenin]

do you have all your drivers? once you reinstall XP, without drivers, you may not be able to get online. You may want to get them before formatting and reinstalling

edit added later//

Man I am a bad reader. you plainly said you saved your drivers :-)

[arts]

shanenin, on 06 February 2010 - 07:45 PM, said:

do you have all your drivers? once you reinstall XP, without drivers, you may not be able to get online. You may want to get them before formatting and reinstalling

edit added later//

Man I am a bad reader. you plainly said you saved your drivers :-)

[arts]

I found a program at windriversbackup.com that took care of all the drivers. I have to back up my pictures which are stored on the same partition but since I updated the software yesterday the program has now disappeared and I can't locate them anymore.

[shanenin]

It is probably better to just goto the ibm website and download the drivers there. At a minimum, download the lan driver.

[arts]

Why the LAN driver?

[shanenin]

the lan driver(wired ethernet controller) is needed to get on the internet. as long as you can do that, you can download everything else you may need.


you should probablt download the following, these are the most important, but may not be all that is needed for all the hardware:

Lan
wireless lan
chipset
video
audio.

[arts]

shanenin, on 08 February 2010 - 03:18 PM, said:

the lan driver(wired ethernet controller) is needed to get on the internet. as long as you can do that, you can download everything else you may need.


you should probablt download the following, these are the most important, but may not be all that is needed for all the hardware:

Lan
wireless lan
chipset
video
audio.

[arts]

Thanks I'll be sure to have that one backed up.

[shanenin]

I am not so certain I would trust the backup software. It may do a good job, but it would not be as good as getting the driver directly from IBM. What model IBM do you have?

[cherokeechief]

well here is some info, when you boot with the XP upgrade cd, and select install, it will start installing files, then you will get to the EULA, and you agree, then it will see you already have the 2 versions installed. now it will show the locations and want you to choose which one to install on.
also it will ask if you want to reformat and install or to do a repair install.
now here is the thing, using an upgrade cd, it will ask during the install to put in an older version of windows to verify that you have a legal version installed to upgrade from.
then when it is finished, you will need to install drivers, and update.
also you should check the boot.ini file to make sure it still shows the 2 operating systems to choose from for boot.
you can also go and rt click on my computer and select properties, then select the advanced tab, and select start up and recovery,
there you can edit the boot options.