There is a great deal on a new rig but it comes with no OS or drivers installed (just the software). How difficult is it for me to install these myself ? Thanks
Format the harddrive, have Win XP on a cd. Go into bios (usually something like F9 or F12 when starting up), make it boot from the cd drive and save it. Put in the Win XP cd and restart. It will install automatically just follow the instructions on screen.
Be prepared to spend the next 3 days doing updates, I think it was something like 144 last time I re-installed XP, I must have rebooted about 100 times :eek: Or I think you can get Service Pack 3 now, someone here will know.
Assuming you've got broadband, doing a fresh install of WinXP is not a big deal any more. 20-40 minutes (+ formatting time, if necessary), depending upon system speed.
Really? Wow, it seemed to take me forever! Is there any way to automate the install instead of having to go through all the options and reboots, reinstalling is a regular thing for me.
Yes, you can burn a "slipstream" version of XP, updates, and your software. Much info about this online. Alternatively, you can do "hard drive cloning" or "hard drive imaging" with something like Acronis True Image.
I've done a few Dimension 8300s recently.. they were comparatively slow. I also did a WinXPx64 on a new T3400... it was almost shockingly fast.
Ok thanks Gnome, one other question while we're chatting about computers.... I regularly clone my C hard drive to an identical hard drive using Acronis, the idea being that if the C drive went caput it would be an easy operation to get back up and running pretty quickly, with all the software and settings already set up. I haven't actually tried it but would just swapping the drives over be enough or would I have to do other stuff? (back in a bit, have to go out...)
Swapping the drives WOULD be enough. It would be current as of the date you cloned, so you'd have to update from that date. Also, the "cloned drive" must be for the current system drive. That is, you could not clone a drive on machine A and plop it into machine B. (However, even that might work if both machines were of the same model... I haven't tried it, but it seem logical it could work.)