Help with upgrading please (forgive me if some questions are repeated)

V

Viernafein

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I think I'm going to try to do some major upgrades, but I'm not entirely certain how to go about it.

My biggest concern is right now, where and how do I save my favorites, settings, and themes in Windows XP so I can make everything look the same again?

Next concern:
I have an 80 gig hard drive that is partitioned into C,D,E,and F drives.
If I copy and save the most important items into my other drives, will I be able to safely format the C drive and reinstall XP without wiping out whats on the other drives?

Everything else, (I think) is simply a matter of upgrading like I would be adding video and sound cards I hope. . .
 
Most of your settings, including your Favorites and anything on your Desktop, are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\username
I don't use themes so I can't help you there.

As far as your hard drive goes, yes, moving everything to another partition and just formating the C: partition will be fine. It won't affect your other partitions. Just make sure you don't accidently repartition your drive ;)
 
As a precaution, I'd write down the size of the C: partition.

Sometimes, the C: isn't the first partition on the drive. If, when you are using the XP install, you don't notice that the first partition isn't C:, you'll end up formating the wrong partition. Be absolutel sure you've got the right partition, becuase it doesn't always list the drive letter.

I've seen other posts on this here of people formating the wrong partition in the XP install.

-Ryandor
 
I think better to:
insert the XP CD and select 'upgrade' options rather than 'new'.
 
Will "upgrade" pretty much wipe my current OS install and start over fresh?

To be quite honest, my current XP install is a pirate copy, so I kinda want to get a real OEM install at the moment.
 
it would help if you told us what exactly you plan to upgrade. then we can tell you what to do (if anything) some changes 2 hardware can be made with a simple reboot, outhers will require a reinstall.
 
hehe sorry ;)

Anyways, so far, I plan on upgrading the motherboard, processor, the DVD drive (I still have the first Creative Dxr2 DVD drive combo :p) plus the sound card.

New motherboard will be an Asus P4PE with a Pentium4 1.8A,
and switching from SDRam to DDR.

I pretty much figure that I'm risking a lot upgrading all of that on a pirate XP copy, so I also bought XP Pro to redo the installation.

Hence, my wondering whether or not I can only format the C drive to install, or if I need to wipe out the hardrive entirely.

That said, if I can only format the C drive. I'll then want to figure out how I can get my settings and such back the way I used to have it.
 
you would only need to format the c drive. you can leave all your mp3's + documents on anougher partition. just swap the parts + boot to the legal Xp cd. then choose install + install over the previous version. u can formatt the partition 1st if you want as well:cool:

glad 2 see your going legal now:happy:
 

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