On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:57:23 -0800, Richard
richbonnie.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:11:19 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:48:23 -0800, Richard
richbonnie.com>
>>wrote:
>>>>> I have a 4 year old computer which came with Windows XP Home Edition.
>>> Lately, it had become unstable (re-booting frequently for no reason) and very
>>> slow (click Start, wait 2 seconds, click Shutdown, wait 4 seconds). So I copied
>>> all of the data files, including a LOT of music files, to another computer on my
>>> LAN. Then I re-installed Windows XP.
>>>
>>> Judging from the still almost full hard drive, the old files are still on the
>>> drive. In "C:\Documents and Settings\" I can see the folder for my old account.
>>> But I cannot access this folder from my new account, even though at the Windows
>>> login screen it says Administrator under my name.
>>
>>
>>Exactly how did you "reinstall" Windows? It sounds like you did it
>>improperly and may have done a "repair installation" (a name which
>>confuses people, in my view; I think it should simply be called a
>>"repair) or, more likely, you installed a second copy in parallel, and
>>now have two installations.
>
> I wanted to do a complete factory reinstall, either via a reload disk or a
> hidden partition. Unfortunately, Dell had not implemented that feature by the
> time the computer was manufactured. All we got was a bunch of program CDROMs.
> Faced with a program-by-program reinstall, I decided to start with Windows.
>
> I put the Win XP install disk into the CDROM drive, and booted off the CDROM
> drive.
Good.
> I saw an option for repair, and chose that.
> Part way through that
> process, it asked for a driver file (I can't remember which), which I was able
> to find on another CDROM. Then it asked for another driver file. At this
> point, I got exasperated, shut down the computer using the on/off switch, booted
> off the CDROM again, and told it to do a fresh install of Windows.
Since you ended up with the same 2GB free that you started with,
undoubtedly you didn't properly tell it to do the clean
reinstallation. As I said, redo it, and follow the instructions above.
> How would I tell if I had 2 installations in parallel?
>
> Before I started this process, the computer only had about 2 GB free space on
> the hard disk (LOTS of music files). It still has about 2 GB left, so I don't
> see how I could have fitted a parallel Windows installation onto the disk.
No, based on what you say here, I agree, and withdraw that suggestion.
>>By the way, I think reinstalling in situations like this is generally
>>poor practice, for a bunch of reasons. I'll mention just two:
>>
>>1. You never found out what was wrong, and if the problems were caused
>>by something you did (which is often likely) you will likely repeat
>>the same behavior and quickly find yourself back in the situation you
>>started in.
>>
>>2. Spontaneous rebooting is often a hardware problem, not a Windows
>>one. If that's the case for you, reinstalling does nothing to solve
>>the problem.
>
> My thought was: Freshly install the software, and see if the computer runs OK.
> If not, try to find the hardware problem.
Your choice, of course, but that's not the approach I would take or
recommend.
> We did have one anomaly last night. The wife was burning a music CDROM. She
> was just sitting there watching the burning progress, when the computer changed
> to the Switch User screen. She logged in as herself again, and the CDROM
> burning process was still running and finished normally.
>
> Previously, during spontaneous re-boots, Dell's splash screen was displayed as
> the computer did a Power On Self Test, and all work was lost.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
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