Thinking Of Reinstalling Win Xp

i dont have service pack 1 on my disk and xp is gonna want to chop that drive up in little partitions. how does one install an older version of windows in the first place.

hi, dont understand the question at all.

well what i wanted to say is. my version of windows does not support that big a hard drive. i understand service pack one does so i am at a loss as to how to do it without going out and buying xp with the service packs on the disk. now the second part is how does one reinstall? when i put the disk in and click install it says this version is older than the version i am useing and setup well stop. it was about this time i remembered the limit on hard drive

hi, ok i get it now. i dont use and have never reinstalled xp but iam sure it will recognize a hd over 30GB, dosnt have anything to do with service packs. theres 2 types of installs. 1) reinstall windows over a exsisting copy (may lose some data) 2) reformat HD (will lose all data)then reinstall first make sure which one you want to do, next if theres any files you cant lose, pull them off the hd. with #2 you will have to reinstall video/sound/motherboard drivers/printers etc type reinstall windows in a search engine and you will get umpteen hits and lots of good advice about how to go about it……..

Also, you are trying to run the install while the computer is already in Windows, which you cannot do. You have to boot to the installation CD, not the hard drive

Why would you want a System partition of that size anyways? If you ever have to reinstall Windows again… everything you had on the drive would be lost(if you don't backup frequently).

Much easier, and more convenient, to create a smaller System partition with the rest as data storage. Install only Windows to the System partition, and everything else to the data partition. That way, if you do need to install Windows again, just reformat the System partition and reinstall Windows to it. You will of course have to reinstall all programs and what not, but at least you won't lose any data that way.

What kind of hard drive is it? Who makes it? Have you checked the Manufacturer's website to see if they have something like Maxtor's Big Drive Enabler?.

Also what kind of Motherboard is in your computer? If it has an Intel Chipset(these verions only: 810, 810E, 810E2, 810L, 815, 815EP, 815G, 815EG, 815P, 820, 820E, 840, 845, 845E, 845G, 845GE, 845GL, 845GV, 845PE, 850, 850E, 860) on it, you can probably use Intel's Application Accelerator to fix that as well.

I still suggest installing to a smaller System partition(mine is set at 10Gigs). You could then update Windows to whichever SP you wish and you would be able to format the rest of the drive in any way you chose through the Disk Manager in XP.

If you boot from the Windows install CD, it will take you through the install process. I don't suggest installing Windows overtop of your current install, that can get very messy. Better to do a clean install(format the drive, then install) in which you can choose the size of the System partition.