Was just wondering... my PC is running increasingly badly and crashing more often, to the extent that I reckon I need to reformat the HD and do a clean re-install of XP, which no doubt will cure the problem.
However, as a no-risk option I thought it might first be worth trying to 'repair' the existing installation, which is one of the options on my XP bootable CD.
How would that work, given that my XP disks are (IIRC) SP1, and I'm currently running SP3? Does that matter or will I screw everything up if I try?
I don't think that repair option does as you wish.
How high a spec. is your machine?
I ask because in considering similar, I would be tempted to try a virtual machine if my machine were suitable. (Not enough memory or disc space on this laptop I use.) This comes partly from partner's very positive experience of running XP within a virtual machine on her Mac (using VMWare Fusion). And partly from using VMWare way back (to run 98 within W2K).
My thought is that you could build a new environment, test it, transfer stuff, etc. When happy with that, rebuild a basic environment, re-install the virtual machine software and run what you created earlier. With sufficient disc space you can keep several copies of your virtual machine.
However, I do not know the current costs, supported configurations, licensing issues, etc.
Have you tried running hardware diagnostics first? Slo-o-o-w running I have found is often due to clutter, but crashing can be memory failure etc. Did you get a diagnostic CD with your PC? I would consider at the least running a memory check as issues here can regularly result in frequent crashes. Should be able to download free memory test - sorry don't have link to hand
A VM solution could work well, unless the OP uses a lot of very graphics intensive programs - games etc. Apart from that, VMs work well. Feed them RAM though, as much as you can fit in.
Another alternative is a 'parallel installation' of XP into another directory, say C:\WINNT2. You should then get the choice at bootup which to use, and still keep access to the exisitng files. You can also boot the old one if you need specific apps which you can't/don't want to install on the new one.
You could try the System Restore if you have it running. I had some kind of virus/trojan eating up my chip last week. I used SR to restore the system to its condition of a week earlier. No problems now!
XP has a system restore facility. It works on dates - so if you remember when you installed service pack 3 you could try going back to before that. It gave me all sorts of problems here so that's what I did.
But don't take my way as gospel. PCs are a bit of a black art here. ;-)
If the machine is increasingly running slowly and is unstable two common causes are virus infestation or the hard drive is starting to fail and having to do a lot of IO attempts to get and write data. You can download tools to check the health of your hard drive.
Yep - the old dual boot is definitely a good idea. Much better than risking trashing the existing system without a proven working alternative.
I feel the possibility of copying a VM (once you have created one) from one physical box to another and just running it is a mega-advantage. (Not an argument!)
Crashing is more likely to be a hardware fault than a windows one. XP is fairly fault tolerant and usually if something goes wrong it will usually just be an application that stops running rather than the whole system crashing. First thing I'd do is download CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) which I recommended on here a year or so ago. It will remove all the unwanted temp files and cookies that build up over time and slow the pc down. Be sure to mark any cookies you want to save because they have website preferences set up in them first in the "Options", "Cookies" section. That will probably mean ploughing through a listing of hundreds of them to find the ones you want to keep but once you've done it you can run CCleaner every day in seconds. The first time I ran it it removed several thousand unwanted files and even on a daily basis it gets rid of up to 100 mb of crap that websites have stored on your disk. Also run its Registry Clean option every now and then.
Second thing to do is run a decent anti-malware program to see if anything nasty is lurking on the disk. I suggest MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM). It's completely free, doesn't have any adware or spyware in it and doesn't hog system resources. It will deal with most viruses, trojans, spyware and adware but I've just had to manually remove a couple of really nasty trojans using the Recovery Console that had made themselves undeleteable on both the disk and in the registry. If you come across anything that tricky then ask on alt.comp.anti-virus.
Third thing to do is to become better aquainted with the usual running processes shown in Task Manager so you can spot unwanted ones i.e viruses more quickly. Type the name of a process you're not familiar with into Google and you'll find a website somewhere telling you what it is and whether it's a normal part of Windows or malware. Soon you'll be able to scan down the list in seconds and tell at a glance if you have something new and unwanted in there.
It's also a good idea to go into Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and get rid of anything you no longer want. Be aware though most uninstalls don't get rid of everything. You still often have to go manually into both Programme Files and Documents and Settings to delete directories and files the install created.
If after all that you are still having problems then either it's XP or hardware. Instructions for a repair from CD are here
formatting link
you'd be better off with a slipstreamed CD that already has the service packs on it because the repair will remove them otherwise and you'll have to download them again.
Just don't rely on system restore. Mine goes through the motions then, after reboot, it says it wasn't possible, try another date. Same thing whatever date I choose. Turned the bugger off. I don't know (or care) what the problem is BTW
========================================= Try 'Spybot' if you're not already using it. It used to find some extraordinary things when I was using Windows.
System Restore works extremely well and reliably so if yours isn't then either you have malware which is crippling it or a serious windows installation problem. System Restore is a good way of getting rid of malware so it's becoming more common for viruses and trojans to disable it first as part of their procedures. Even if you don't care I still suggest you download Malwarebytes AntiMalware and see what it comes up with. There are some really unpleasant malwares going about at the moment like Vundo which can be very difficult to remove unless you're seriously au fait with what goes on under the hood on your pc. I keep a fairly close eye on my pc security and what's going on under the hood but I've still got landed with two real stinkers in the last couple of weeks which had me struggling to shift them for a while despite me being very experienced at that type of thing.
Hackers have found ways to make their virus files almost impossible to delete either in Normal mode or Safe mode by linking them into other processes which tell you the file is in use and so can't be deleted. You have to do it from a boot CD or the Recovery Console or by putting the disk into another machine as the D drive. You still have to know enough to find them in the first place though so you know what to delete.
Also keep an eye on any other unusual behaviour such as Google searches taking you to sites other than the ones you were expecting.
The other anti-malware program which is getting a very good reputation is SuperAntiSpyware. It's a wanky name but a good program. Also never download anything stated to remove malware that you see in Google ads or on websites unless you really know it's a genuine product. Half of these things actually instal malware rather than remove it.
Before trying anything it might be prudent to image the disk to another physical HDD, say a USB drive. There are some free imaging tools available on bootable CD's. This way, if you mess it up, you can at least retrun to the same state. This may not be practical if you have the whole of your HDD formatted as a single partition. The image file may well be bigger than your USB HDD.
I like the way in which you declare that XP is a fine robust OS and that all problems are hardware glitches. Then you go on (and on) for long paragraphs discussing problems that are solely software issues and the fact that the Windows security model sucks donkey dick.
Do you have a updated security program, Norton will do a free test to see if you have a bug. Is system fairly new, is HD full have you drefraged it. Getting rid of junk programs, and check if XP has updates and run scans.
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