Reinstalling Windows XP (Dell)

[OSUsushichic]

I'm trying to reinstall Windows XP on my Dell Dimension 4400 (piece o' crap!). (Well, first I just tried to repair Windows, but it asked me for the admin password, and I haven't signed in as an admin in so long that I don't remember the password, so I could repair altogether.) It's a computer I don't use anymore, and I'm having a lot of little problems with it, so I thought I would just wipe it clean and perhaps get it ready to sell or donate. When I attempt to reinstall XP, I am prompted to choose a partition, which confuses me. I don't want two versions of XP on my machine, so how do I avoid this? Do I install the XP on the Partition 1 and then go back in and somehow delete it from Partition 2? Am I making any sense? :p I'm just looking for the easiest way to do this without screwing up my computer!

I'm not that good at this. Hell, I'm amazed that I figured out how to get to the BIOS menu and reconfigure the boot order (since the CD for some reason was not booting upon startup.) Ack!

Right now, I just want to throw this machine out the window and slowly get drunk...

 

[BrutusMaximus]

Actually the best way, is to delete both of the partitions.......then just make 1 big one in it's place, (it has instructions for this), then just install on that 1 big partition. There is nothing on it that you need to save, right?

 

[OSUsushichic]

Actually the best way, is to delete both of the partitions.......then just make 1 big one in it's place, (it has instructions for this), then just install on that 1 big partition. There is nothing on it that you need to save, right?

Nope, I've taken everything off of it that I need, so no worries there. I wasn't sure about messing with the partitions, but come to think of it I don't know why it would matter. I will try your suggestion. Thanks!

 

[Muck]

How big is the hard drive and how big are the two partitions?

For a couple of years now Dell has been putting a back-up image of the OS on a separate partition instead of restore disks as the base image was getting too large to fit on a CD.

If there is just a tiny (50MB or so) partition at the beginning of the drive and a large partition with the rest of the drive contents, that is has been Dell SOP for quite some time. The tiny partition just contains diagnostic and other utilities.

You might want to check with Dell support before you blow both the partitions away. If you don't have an actual restore disk you might be destroying your only copy of the image.

On a more technical note the reason a lot of folks divide their drive into two partitions is so that you can put the OS/Apps etc on one partition, and then put user data on the second. That way if you ever have to re-image the machine you can blow away the OS/Apps partition and leave the data partition alone. :)

 

[BrutusMaximus]

You can either delete them and make one big one, or simply select the C partition, and format it.......simple as that :)

(I assume she has a restore cd if she has gotten to the point where you can choose partitions).