Problems reinstalling Windows

defenstration · 21-09-2006 12:11am #1

Bought a Dell Inspiron 9400 but the loada junk software that came pre-installed with it inspired me to reinstall Windows just to get rid of it all. So I ran the Windows Media Center Edition cd, which gave me the option of a new installation. All's going fine and I reinstall. Baiscally, to cut a long story short, it seems to have installed a second Windows without actually uninstalling or overwriting the first. I have two hard drives (C:/ and

/) and I think this might be the problem - it has put the new installation on

/ instead of C:/. Would I be correct? When I go to restart the pc it asks me which operating system I would like to use, and it gives me two options. I presume one is that installed on the C:/ drive and the other is that installed on the

/ drive?

I've formatted the

/ drive and am gonna go about reinstalling the operating system on C:/ to see if that solves the problem. But I'm just wondering, should I format the C:/ drive before installing the OS on it, or would the installation just automatically format it or overwrite it? Would it be a good idea or would it be dangerous to format the C:/ drive, even if I am just gonna reinstall Windows onto it directly afterwards anyway?

Cheers in advance.

aidan_walsh · 21-09-2006 12:14am

When you are asked where you want to install Windows, select the C drive - thats where the original Windows installation is. Do select formatting the drive, a quick format should get you by.

would it be dangerous to format the C:/ drive

Only if there is anything on it you want to keep.

defenstration · 21-09-2006 12:30am

Cheers, will do that so. Just one more thing though - now every time I restart the computer, I'm being asked to choose my OS from the following 3 options:
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Professional Setup

I never got this before I tried reinstalling. The first time I installed, there were only 2 options (the last 2). If I choose the first option, I am brought into my new installation (although that doesn't work now since I formatted the

/ drive). If I choose the seond option I'm brought back to the original installation with loadsa useless Dell software! And if I choose the third option, I'm being brought into what seems to be setup for XP Professional (which doesn't work cos the installation cd I have is for XP Media Center Edition).
Basically, I'm wonderin how do I get rid of these options so that I'm not prompted to choose every single time I startup the computer? I doubt reinstalling on the C:/ drive alone will do it cos like I said, even after formatting the

/ drive, the option for that drive/installation is still there.

Ruu_Old · 21-09-2006 12:33am

Right click on My Computer, select Properties, select Advanced and then Settings under Startup and Recovery. Select the operating system that you are using from the drop-down menu under default operating systems. Also untick the box beside "Time to display list of operating systems:"

aidan_walsh · 21-09-2006 12:34am

That should be corrected by the new installation. After you reinstall you should be brought straight into MCE (afaik - never installed the MCE edition myself).

defenstration · 21-09-2006 9:23am

Thanks for the help lads

irlrobins · 21-09-2006 10:07am

Start->run->msconfig. Click on Boot.ini. Then click on "check all boot paths". This will remove any dead boot paths.

defenstration · 24-09-2006 12:49am

I have Windows installed on the

/ drive but want to move it to the C:/ drive. So before doing so, I figure it's a good idea to format the C:/ drive cos even with everything deleted off it, there's still nearly 2GB of used space for some reason. But when I try to format it, I get a popup telling me:
"Windows was unable to complete the format"
No reason provided. I only get this error after it seems to have gone through the whole formatting (- the indicator has reached the very end after about 20 minutes, and then I get this error), although if I tick 'Quick Format', I get the error straight away.

Anyone know why this is happening?
And if not, is there any was of freeing the last of that space on the C:/ drive, or is it normal that there should be that much used space (drive in full contains about 57GB)?

defenstration · 24-09-2006 12:51am

irlrobins wrote:

Start->run->msconfig. Click on Boot.ini. Then click on "check all boot paths". This will remove any dead boot paths.

That seems to work alright, but only when the Windows startup is set to Selective Mode. If I switch back to Normal Mode, then the options appear again. Would it be ok to start Windows in selective mode every time or what are the drawbacks of it?

feylya · 24-09-2006 12:51am

Is your pagefile on your c drive?

irlrobins · 24-09-2006 2:01am

Merge and move to windows forum.

defenstration · 24-09-2006 1:14pm

feylya wrote:

Is your pagefile on your c drive?

searched the hard drives for pagefile and found pagefileconfig. Is that what yer talking about? It's on my

/ drive, where the rest of my OS is - I'm trying to format my C:/ drive so I can move (or rather just put a new) Windows installation on it, but as ya can see from my post above, I'm having trouble doing that also!

defenstration · 24-09-2006 1:16pm

defenstration wrote:

I have Windows installed on the / drive but want to move it to the C:/ drive. So before doing so, I figure it's a good idea to format the C:/ drive cos even with everything deleted off it, there's still nearly 2GB of used space for some reason. But when I try to format it, I get a popup telling me:
"Windows was unable to complete the format"
No reason provided. I only get this error after it seems to have gone through the whole formatting (- the indicator has reached the very end after about 20 minutes, and then I get this error), although if I tick 'Quick Format', I get the error straight away.

Anyone know why this is happening?
And if not, is there any was of freeing the last of that space on the C:/ drive, or is it normal that there should be that much used space (drive in full contains about 57GB)?

It's actually 5GB of used space still there and the capacity of the drive is only 50GB. Anyway of freeing up more space or preferably, of formatting the drive?

defenstration · 25-09-2006 9:46am

I tried formatting the C:/ drive in Disk Management also, but the option was greyed out. In Disk Management, the C:/ drive is given the notation:
Healthy (System)
whereas my

/ drive (where the OS is installed) has the notation:
Healthy (Boot)

Would the "System" notation have anything to do with the fact that I cannot format the C:/ drive? Does that mean there are system files still present on the drive or sumthin?

seamus · 25-09-2006 9:59am

defenstration wrote:

I tried formatting the C:/ drive in Disk Management also, but the option was greyed out. In Disk Management, the C:/ drive is given the notation:
Healthy (System)
whereas my / drive (where the OS is installed) has the notation:
Healthy (Boot)

Would the "System" notation have anything to do with the fact that I cannot format the C:/ drive? Does that mean there are system files still present on the drive or sumthin?

Yes. Basically what's happened is that you have multiple copies of windows. Some are installed on your

\, and some are installed on your C:\. Your

\ has taken over as the boot drive. What this means is that when your computer starts up, it looks to the

\ for the initial information as regards what OSes are installed, and where to find them. Your C:\ is your System drive, because that's where the windows files reside for the OS which you are currently. If you want to format the C:\, you need to boot into a version of windows which has its files on the

\.

defenstration · 25-09-2006 10:11am

seamus wrote:

Yes. Basically what's happened is that you have multiple copies of windows. Some are installed on your \, and some are installed on your C:\. Your \ has taken over as the boot drive. What this means is that when your computer starts up, it looks to the \ for the initial information as regards what OSes are installed, and where to find them. Your C:\ is your System drive, because that's where the windows files reside for the OS which you are currently. If you want to format the C:\, you need to boot into a version of windows which has its files on the \.

Cheers Seamus, but how do I get the system files from C:\ to

\? I installed Windows on the

\ drive and any chance I got during the installation, I pointed to the

\ drive, so why then were the system files put on C:/? Ok, the OS had previously been on the C:/ drive (while installing it on the

/ drive), so maybe the installation saw that the system files were already on C:\ and thought there was no need to put them on

\ also?

seamus · 25-09-2006 10:37am

defenstration wrote:

Cheers Seamus, but how do I get the system files from C:\ to \? I installed Windows on the \ drive and any chance I got during the installation, I pointed to the \ drive, so why then were the system files put on C:/? Ok, the OS had previously been on the C:/ drive (while installing it on the / drive), so maybe the installation saw that the system files were already on C:\ and thought there was no need to put them on \ also?

Each installation of windows installs its own files. There is probably an installation of windows on the

\. Have a look on that drive for a Windows or Windows.X folder. What you need to do is; Go to Start, then Run. Type "notepad c:\boot.ini". Paste the contents of that file up here. Do not make any changes to it

defenstration · 25-09-2006 11:33am

Will do that tonight so - don't have access to my laptop at the mo. Thanks.

defenstration · 25-09-2006 4:07pm

seamus wrote:

Each installation of windows installs its own files. There is probably an installation of windows on the \. Have a look on that drive for a Windows or Windows.X folder. What you need to do is; Go to Start, then Run. Type "notepad c:\boot.ini". Paste the contents of that file up here. Do not make any changes to it

First of all, there's a Windows folder in the

\ drive. There was one in the C:\ drive as well before I deleted everything from the drive. The following is what in contained in C:\boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disc(0)rdisc(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disc(0)rdisc(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disc(0)rdisc(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Problems reinstalling Windows

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