Topic: win XP + new 40G hard drive

[TR]

Hi Folks.. I need some advice plz  .

Some time in the next 2 days Im biting the Bullet and having a clean install of win xp home onto a new 40 G hard drive(maxtor D740XATA-133 7200rpm, 2mb cache 8.5ms Quiet drive)
Any advice would be much appreciated....

Hookstar

[Simon]

What did you actually want to know, Hook?  If you have a new hard drive, and a shiny new XP disc, you just pop the disc in the CD Rom drive, your machine should boot from it, and the installation will begin.  Most newish machines should be able to boot from the CD, so you shouldn't need a bootable floppy, but if it won't, I think you can adjust your BIOS settings to tell it to boot from your CD Rom drive.  

It will ask you at some point whether you want to partition your hard drive, so make sure you read each question carefully before merrily clicking OK, but when I did mine, I found myself going with most of the defaults, as I didn't know any better, and it seemed to work OK.

Sorry if this is a bit basic - perhaps someone with a bit more experience of installing XP will drop by soon.  

[Sandra]

I am not sure how much XP needs for installation but I would always partition a drive of that size and have the OS on a partition of a few gig so that if you ever needed to wipe and reinstall it you can retain your other data on the second partition. 2 Gig seems to be sufficient for 98 SE but you may be better of with around 5 gig on XP which still leaves you a good size drive for everything else  

[Adept]

Can't argue with any of that Simon & Sandra

The only thing I can add is to check that your BIOS is set to boot from the CD-ROM drive first, otherwise you'll be waiting a long time for the CD to boot

Oh and I'd go for an 8GB system partition for XP to give you some breathing room.

[Simon]

Following on from this, if XP is installed on a hard drive with no partitions, as mine is, is it then possible to partition it in a portion of the HD after installation, so as to achieve the position Sandra mentioned above?

[Adept]

It can be done fairly simply with PartitionMagic Simon.

[bat69]

I've learned to create a decent sized partition for the OS and for the programs, and keep all the data in the other partition(s). The reason for doing this is if there is a problem with the OS of a viral attack, then its only the OS/program partition that needs reformatting, leaving the data safe. Do keep backups tho

Sean, which version of PM works with XP, as I'm about to be a user of XP for the first time, and I only have PM5 ... Do I have to fork out for PM8?

[Adept]

Sorry Bat, PM5 and PM6 won't work with XP (I have PM6 )> I think PM7 was the first to support XP.

[bat69]

Thanks for that, I know I need a new copy now :- and not to load it when I start putting everything on

[Sandra]

Is there any way to find out if version 7 works with XP as I have it but havent got XP so am unable to try it to see  

[TR]

Well its arrived   and I can hardly wait to start taking the case apart and installing the new hard drive!! and new software   but will have to wait until tomorrow night (watch this space) if Im not about,I might have failed somewhere along the line  

1 more thing.. how do I save all my outlook mail and Addresses and to where, I have 1 or 2 contacts and a few mails that I  need to save, all work related of course  >.


Hookstar

[Simon]

I've loaded PM7 on to XP, and it seemed to want to work, but then I bottled out as I didn't really know what I was doing!

But, yes, PM7 seems to work with XP.  

[Sandra]

I'm not too sure how to save your mail Hookstar but the address book saves straight to floppy easily.Just open the address book click on Export from File options and select the floppy to export it to  
If you can find which folder it stores the mails in then you could jut go to that folder and save from there but I am not sure where it hides in my PC  

[Adept]

If you slave your old drive off the new one after you have installed XP on the new drive, you can simply import your mail into Outlook Express on the new drive.

Before you dismantle your PC, you need to do the following:-

Open Outlook Express and select Tools|Accounts
Select the Mail Tab
For each email account listed, click it and choose Export, saving the file to an easy to remember folder.
Choose Tools|Options and select the Maintenance Tab
Click store folder.
Write down the path given which is the path to your Outlook message store.

When XP is installed you will then need to Import the mail accounts (from Tools|Accounts) and Import the mail store (from File|Import|Messages). Dont forget that the path to the message store is now probably on D: rather than C:

I hope that makes sense

[Adept]

Is there not a folder already somewhere Adept which stores the messages? I use Incredimail and have done a file and folder search and looked in each one that I thought may have my mail in but to no avail.
It must store then somewhere prior to exporting to a folder of your own surely  

I'm not sure about Incredimail, I've never used it

As I said above you can find out where Outlook Express is storing the files by choosing Tools|Options, selecting the Maintenance Tab and
clicking store folder.