Reinstalling XP (read to understand better)

[scsa20]

okey, before any of you tells me to just do the repare method, I looked and it said there was no pervesle installed windows... and the guy at tech support from Microsoft says to just do a clean installtion and also told me to put my C drive, set it as a slave and put it in my 98 system to copy over whatever files that is important and it says it'll work even tho FAT32 systems doesn't like it... but I forgot to mention to him that I also have encrypted files on it... so first question

Could this work out by setting it as slave on this 98SE computer??

okey, now getting on with more info... he said when installing it, is to choose the portion and delete it, then after words is to recreate it and choose to format it as NTFS full... so next question:

Would it actuly work by doing that and would it give me an error about those encrypt files?? If it well... how would I go about decrypting it if I don't have access to XP?? Could I hook it up to a friend's computer that's running XP and do that??

well.... I'm hopeing to get some answers with-in 2-3 hours (even tho. I don't mind waiting longer, is just that I want to get busy right away)... thanks ahead of time

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

You want to delete all thats on the drive?

If you delete the partition its gone for sure dont see how it would matter encrypted files or not.

If you were talking formatting a drive with encrypted files thats a different ballgame.

sure you can hook it as a slave and be able to install an os from win98 but if you use ntfs file system you cant access that from win98.

not sure what you really want to do here

 

[MultiPle3]

I think I understand the problem.

If you have a friend with xp I would hook the hard drive up to his computer as the slave and copy the files to his hard drive. Format the drive while it's in his computer. Then put it back in your computer as the master and reinstall everything. To get your files back you can either network the two computers or put your hard drive in his computer again as the slave. Before you do this you should wait to see if anyone else on this forum agrees with me. I've never actually had to do this before.

 

[scsa20]

wow, really?? deleteing the partition actully wipes out ever thing on that partition I want to delete even if it has encrypted files?? well... that answered my question..

about FAT32 reading to NTFS... acrading to the tech support dude from Microsoft says that it's true that it wouldn't read it, but I could still back up files from it?? how could you back up files off of it and put it on CDs if this system (FAT32) can't even read a NTFS format hard drive??

okey... here's some more questions: I could delete the partation from the XP setup, right?? and it'll copy over all the CD drivers and all that so that it'll use the CD-ROM, right??

sorry, I just get too nerves when it comes to doing this kind of work (even tho. most new computers has the CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM) drivers built into the motherboard).

thanks again

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Ok

Sure if your not worried about loosing all the stuff dont break a sweat just use the xp setup and delete the partion and have set up make a new one and all will be fine and dont worry xp setup will install the drivers it needs to install its self ie cdrom and what not even win98 had cdrom drivers included


so why go to all that trouble unless you really want to save some important stuff then you should use another computer and hook up as a slave

 

[MultiPle3]

I've heard that the xp setup cd works like the old win98 and earlier boot disks. It should allow you to delete the partition and format it into either fat32 or ntfs. You will lose all of your files this way. Once again, I've never had to do this before with xp before.

edit: kermit beat me to it

 

[scsa20]

lol, multiple3, he sure did

anyways... thanks for those info... I just needed to know so I wouldn't do anything stupid (like delete the partation of my D drive >.<) thanks again