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Guest JC2

WIN XP FSCOF nightmare

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Guest

Well, I have taken the predominate advice and purchased WIN XP Home in order to improve FSCOF performance and to allow additional RAM installation. Luckily, I tried XP on a 20 gig HD that had been used as a slave under win98SE. XP appeared to install okay but I screwed up and installed it on the existing partitioned disk. It boots up just fine but after installing FSCOF, I get messages that FS( is looking for non-existant scenery folders? I did the express installation which said all files would be copied to the HD. I also lost my modem - that is, it is there and it shows up in WinXP but it will not dial out (not even to register Win XP). I ran the hardware compatibility test and it says all hardware is compatible. I do not see any option in the WinXP installation setup to reformat the hardrive (would like to re-install winXP ad FSCOF). and win 98SE will not reformat the WinXP occuppied partition. It will only show the 2nd partition as existing. I think I just trashed a 20 gig hardrive. Any suggestions?Dave

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Guest daveg4otu

If you have(had?) Win98 you presumably have a start up floppy(If not you can download a copy online several places.Use the floppy to start in MSDOS and format your partition there -"format C:" or whichever partition you have XP on(You will need to set "First boot device" to floppy in the BIOS).Then reset first boot as CDROM and you can reinstall XP,or whatever you want.Dave

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Hi Dave,in all likelihood, XP has formatted your drive in NTFS, that's why Win98 doesn't see it. However, the XP installation CD will give an option to reformat, but it's fairly late during the process, i.e. you 'll have to select 'install', then go through the next couple of screens, and then the option to format will pop up.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

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Guest daveg4otu

GostaIf I remember correctly ,here when I made this PC dual boot by adding XP to a WinME machine ,the default install on XP was FAT32(I could be wrong but I seem to remember that was how the setup ran- you had to specifically choose to go NTFS).If I'm correct then he will be on FAT32 but either way ,going to MSDOS to format the partition wipes the slate clean and he can start again.Dave

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Guest

Hi,Formatting wont entirely remove win XP from your HDD.. The only way to get back to a clean slate is to first wipe the partition and then use fdisk /mbr which will remove the memory block residence. Otherwise WinXP will leave residue of itself in memory or in the boot sector.. Then you can safely reinstall either Win98 or WinXP again.CheersLindsay

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Just as a caution note, and I may be wrong, won't using fdisk /mbr remove Win98 as well Lindsay?Don't want Dave to end up with no OS if he can't reinstall Win98 :-)

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Guest daveg4otu

Fdisk will remove all and he(the original "Dave")will have to start over with both OS- as I understand his post he wants to put a new XP on the secondary partition so leaving the boot sector won't matter.All the above is invalid if the XP partition is on a completely separate HDD in which case Fdisk is fine as he'll then have a clean sheet on that HDD and the master HDD can remain untouched.Not sure exactly what he has(IE 2 HDDs -master and slave or 1 HDD with 2 partitions)Dave(No.2)

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Guest JC2

Fdisk /mbr will not wipe Win98 or Windows XP. Fdisk /mbr simply rewrites the master boot record (which is what MBR stands for) and is useful if a drive won't boot. It won't destroy any data.Windows XP CDs are bootable, so you can just stick it in and boot to the CD. You will have the option early on to manage your partitions.Jim

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Guest

I will guarantee Fdisk /mbr will not lose any of the data.. I recommended it to Dave because he already has a previous installation of WinXP on the partitioned drive.. To get back to a clean slate he would need to take those steps.. On install one of the first things WinXp does after booting is load a heap of drivers irrelevant to your system, then looks for any previously installed OS versions and makes a note of them.. That's why I suggested fdisk /MBR to remove what installation indexes are there from the previous unwanted install..Also i doubt very much you have damaged your HDD Dave.. When you reinstall WinXP will check it's integrity.. It also has the option to repair the drive if in the unfortunate event it has been damaged..Jim has said it perfectly.. "Windows XP CDs are bootable, so you can just stick it in and boot to the CD. You will have the option early on to manage your partitions".CheersLindsay

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Guest JC2

Fdisk /mbr will not take you back to a clean slate. As a matter of fact, Dave will likely not notice any difference at all after running it. Fdisk /mbr is not at all the same as running fdisk on the partition and choosing to delete the partition. The temporary files that Windows XP loads during installation are not affected by running fdisk /mbr at this point because they are already gone. Windows removes them after the installation.Jim

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