Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Windows Clean Install--seeking advice

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Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 11-11-2002, 03:26 PM:

One of our computers has never run very well. I have tried reinstalling Windows 98 over the top of the current (98)system in hopes that it would correct problems by replacing missing or corrupted files, but that doesn't seem to do much at all It crashes often and seems to have a lot of bugs in the system and in some of the software. I have been considering reformatting the hard drive and starting from scratch. If I do so, does anyone have any advice? We have also installed some extras like a soundcard and a CD-R drive. Will these add-ons need to be physically removed before reinstalling the system? Any advice or assistance would be much appreciated.

Posted by John Moriarty (Member # 1153) on 11-11-2002, 04:28 PM:

Joe Beres said

quote:
Will these add-ons need to be physically removed before reinstalling the system?

No (probably not). Infact, I would recomend the opposite. I have always found that when putting in new hardware, the system is much happier if you do a fresh install of the operating system. I guess this this is because it gets rid of a lot of the junk that Windows accumulates (esp. old drivers and the like). Just make sure you have the drivers for them, preferabley the most recent ones.

Yours
John

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-11-2002, 04:39 PM:

Joe, did you uninstall Internet Explorer before you reinstalled Win98 ontop of itself? Since Internet Explorer updates Windows when installed, Windows Setup won't copy over a lot of files because it sees that newer versions exist on the harddrive.

Before starting from scratch you might want to try:

1. Uninstalling Internet Explorer
2. Reinstalling Windows 98 ontop of itself.
3. Reinstalling Internet Explorer

If you've got 35 minutes to spare it might save you the trouble of starting from scratch... it's worth a try.

If you do start from scratch make sure you install updated motherboard chipset drivers before anything else if possible.

Posted by Lionel Fouillen (Member # 1475) on 11-11-2002, 04:43 PM:

Joe,

Make sure you have all the drivers. Make sure you at least have the driver for the device that allows this PC to connect to the internet (should this be the case) so you could get any drivers from the editors sites.

But it's not required to remove the devices you installed recently. Your CD-R should be detected and activated immediately provided it's the standard IDE-ATAPI interface, without any external driver. If it's a SCUSI you shouldn't really worry either.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 11-11-2002, 05:05 PM:

Joe, if you have Windows 98 SE (it will boot from that cdrom) use it. However, you will have to tell your BIOS to boot from a CDROM drive.

If, for some reason, you cannot boot from the CDROM, you can boot from your emergency startup floppy disk and select the appropiate option. The boot disk will load the necessary cdrom drivers and mouse to start your installation. I might mention that it is important to shut the computer down for a minute or so after the drive is formatted, and pull the plug. Some virus programs can reside in the DRAM, and it will stay there unless you cold boot.

Sometimes as a precaution, I take the BIOS down, too. That is done by removing the battery and/or a jumper setting. However, before you do that, make sure you record your BIOS settings so you can re-establish things.

Disable "Flash Bios", too. Some virus programs can change your BIOS settings. If you have a boot sector virus option enabled in the BIOS, it will, more often that not, screw up your installation. Turn it off.

There could be a bunch of things that could cause your computer to run slow. Virus's, bad need of defrag, improper BIOS setup, you name it.

Save your important files, and just format the drive and start clean. That's what I do, and I have not had too much problem. Sometimes (more often than not) I remove all the ancillary hardware except for the graphics card, and after Windows is installed, re-insert them one by one, let the computer find it, and feed it whatever it asks for.

Windows 98 can be kind of lame when it tries to install too much crap at the same time.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-11-2002, 05:10 PM:

Although technically should not be necessary to remove all the "extras" before you reinstall, I tend to agree with Paul's advice. Remove the extras, nuke & pave, then add the extras back in 1 at a time, updating each device's driver as you go and making sure the system boots cleanly after each add-on. As Paul said, Win98 can get "confused" if too many new devices are discovered at once, although this is less of a problem during a clean install. Either way will probably work, but doing it 1 at a time gives you a little more control.

Of course before you start you want to have all the updated drivers at hand. And please tell us you're using Win98-SE, not the original release!

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 11-11-2002, 05:21 PM:

David said:

quote:
Of course before you start you want to have all the updated drivers at hand. And please tell us you're using Win98-SE, not the original release!

Definately. If you only have the upgrade, you'll be dead in the water.

When you get it up and running, go to Microsoft's Windows Update page, download and install all the critical and recommended fixes. It'll take some time. You will discover there is at least 30 megs or more of updates and fixes that should be installed.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-11-2002, 05:27 PM:

Better yet, if this is the computer you regularily use, go and buy Windows 2000, you won't be disappointed.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 11-11-2002, 05:37 PM:

Daryl, that's for sure. Mine has not crashed yet!

Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 11-11-2002, 05:42 PM:

Yes, I have been using 98 SE.

If I were to fork over the $200 for the 2000 upgrade, should I uninstall IE?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-11-2002, 05:45 PM:

It wouldn't hurt to unistall IE first, but in the case of a Win2000 upgrade it wouldn't make a difference since Win2000 Setup, in upgrade mode, upgrades the entire shell no matter what (which is what IE upgrades). So no, you don't have to uninstall IE for the Win2000 upgrade.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-11-2002, 05:54 PM:

If you can afford the $200, Win2000 is WAY more stable than 98. Go for it! The only thing to watch out for is if you have any oddball hardware installed, make sure there are Win2K drivers available. And download the Win2K drivers ahead of time.

Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 11-11-2002, 06:02 PM:

Ok, so perhaps somewhere down the line I will get the 2000 upgrade. This discussion is making think about our other computer, a Dell laptop that came with ME. I am having some similar problems with that machine and similar results when trying to reinstall Windows ME. I don't at the moment want to shell out the $200 for the 2000 upgrade, and I would hate to have to buy a second copy ever. Any ideas there?

By the way, thanks for all of the quick replies.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 11-11-2002, 06:26 PM:

My method usually works
Remove all but the CD rom drive Hard Drive and Video Card

Fdisk the drive and delete the complet drive and all partitions
shut down the machine and then reboot and create a primary partition

Using the startup floppy create a drive call WIN98 and copy the CDrom cab files to it and the do an install from the hardrive
When windows is installed installe the motherboard drivers (VIA if you have them)
Then install the other cards(sound network SCSI etc) and install there drivers one at a time

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 11-11-2002, 10:28 PM:

IE won't uninstall. It can revert back to the previous version. If the "repair IE" option is run, it'll tell you what files are missing or corrupt. Sometimes, it'll tell you to re-install the product.

As for removing IE, it can be done manually. But the person who tries it better know what they are doing.

Personally, I would not fiddle with the upgrade version of 2000 Professional. The full clean version is not that much more expensive, and the benefits reaped will offset the cost.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-11-2002, 10:35 PM:

My bad, I usually just tell people to 'uninstall it' since the procedure to revert to the last version is essentially the same as acutally uninstalling most any other program. Admittedly this doesn't work as well if you've upgraded IE multiple times, but usually the outcome is notably better than not doing this.

In Windows 2000 you would click 'Change/Remove' in the capture below.
Windows 98 is similar, just a different Window (and a whole lot of different code).

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-11-2002, 11:28 PM:

Several years ago, I would have cringed at doing a "clean install" of Windows. That really goes for those days when you had to install some flavor of MS-DOS and then put Windows 3.1 on top of it. All of those issues involving the 640k limit, high memory, those TSRs and other bullcrap made maintaining a PC a real pain in the ass. And then there was always that issue of whether your boot floppy would work properly (like actually allow the CD-ROM to be available on it).

Most PCs are pretty easy now. The single biggest improvement has to have been putting boot-from-CD right into the motherboard BIOS. Not much need for emergency boot floppies now.

The only possible hangup is doing a clean install with certain add-ons installed. For example, I have a USB 2.0 expansion card in my Dell PC. Just to keep the new hardware wizard or some crap from screwing up the install process, I just take out the card and run the installation procedure for it near last.

Posted by Christopher Duvall (Member # 284) on 11-12-2002, 01:56 AM:

I have dealt with some of these same problems being a PC person. However there has been one problem not mentioned at all on this thread...hardware. One of the most elusive issues with dealing with a crashing PC is a piece of malfuntioning hardware. The biggest offenders of this bunch is a bad motherboard. That alone can make it seem like you have other bad hardware, viruses, corrupted files and all of the above. Bad motherboards can also lead to other hardware failure. I once had a motherboard take out a video card and 256mb of memeory. The trick is trying to find out which piece is at fault.

My recommendation would be to completely wipe the hard-drive(s)and completely re-install everything from scratch. Make sure you have the most up-to-date drivers and software. Win2k or XPpro is a must to have since they are more stable than 98 or lower. If everything starts to crap out again after that, your hardware is causing the problems. Something may be conflicting with something else or it is just bad. That is where the fun begins. Good luck...

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-12-2002, 03:45 AM:

Might I recommend you do a clean install, then Ghost it immediately. I have cdrom images of my computers and servers (less those HUGE programs like Office). To resurrect a computer that is giving me fits, I save the email folder and re-Ghost it from the cdrom. From there all I have to do is load up those last couple of programs that were too big to fit on the image.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-12-2002, 05:03 AM:

I too keep an image of my system drive with all drivers and applications installed (though I use Drive Image).

Tip: if you're imaging a W2K system volume, run the 'sysprep' utility (downloadable from the MS website, search under 'sysprep') before creating the image. This basically tells it to do a plug-and-play search the next time it boots, so that if you've made any hardware changes before restoring the image they won't cause the OS to go unstable.