Installing Windows the hard way!Doing it the hard way....... Why? Because you CAN thats why. Who is this page for? 1. Those who have been told they need to format their hard drive and reinstal windows, losing all their information (downloads, documents you have typed etc etc) and there's a good chance you have thousands of documents if you are still using Windows 98 2. You ony have a "recovery cd" or a "master" cd which will wipe your drive clean and put everything back like it was when it left the factory. For those people you will almost certainly find the Windows installation files in a a folder in your Windows directory, usually called Options e.g c:\windows\options\cabs these are your windows setup files. 3. Those "techies" who told the above to format their drive and reinstall windows because a) they don't know any better or b) they thought they were helping the above by saying that or c) they just couldnt be bothered thinking about another way. 4. Those "techies" with all the certs and exams after their names who have never done Tech Sup except when they were sleeping and dreaming up the next load of bull to give people or who have read a few books and think thats all there is to it or who have have no real practical experience of Tech Sup in a corporate environment.. 5. The "techie" who is interested in finding solutions to problems. 6. All of the above Tech Sup in a corporate environment is NOT about telling the user to format and reinstall windows. It is about giving a solution to the user. Imagine the scenario: you work in Tech Sup for a large corporate organisation, a user calls you and has a problem with their system. Do you a) tell this user who looks after corporate accounts making thousands for the company to format and lose all the customers data. b) offer them a solution so they can save the info before fixing the problem. or c) resign now because you told them to do a) and you know damn well you will be out of a job by the days end. Of course the answer is b) and that is what Tech Sup is. Offering the customer a solution to their problem that is satisfactory to them and to you, keeps you in a job and as a by-product makes your job as Tech Sup invaluable to those users as they now think the sun shines out of places it doesnt naturally reach concerning you. You have just saved your company thousands of man hours, thousands of pounds, and the user now knows what real Tech Sup is. Any fool can tell them to format and reinstal but that fool shouldnt be you if you want to keep your job for much longer and if you are really interested in Tech Sup as a career. Firstly, unless there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with the hard drive there is NO need to format it at all. You can run scandisk/chkdsk (depending on your version of windows) to mark the sectors on the drive that you think maybe causing you a problem and attempt to recover any files in those sectors. So forget the excuses of the so-called techies. Lastly, I half expect someone to go through these pages and prove me wrong, EVENTUALLY. But as long as they learn whilst proving me wrong than all is good. At least these pages will have made a techie think before telling someone to format. ********** Windows 98 There are several methods of re-installing /repairing Windows 98. a) over the top of itself from within windows. b) over the top of itself from MSDOS c) using the so-called system file checker SFC d) re-installing into a new folder. Each re-installation has its advantages and disadvantages. If you can get into Windows 98 then try re-installing over the top of itself by inserting the Windows 98 CD into the CD drive and clicking install. If this fails to solve your problem or if Windows has fallen over totally and you can not start it even in safemode then use the method described below to install windows over the top of itself by installing into the same folder as it is already installed. This gives a cleaner install that installing from windows itself and fixes more system issues. If you canot get into windows or you do not want to get into windows then follow the method described below to re-install into a different folder. No it is NOT dead, it is still alive and kicking and is one of the best systems for the user as far as ease of use is concerned. Firstly, make sure your pc can boot from the CD drive or failing that head over to www.bootdisk.com and download the file boot98sc.exe. Save this file to your hard drive (the desktop would be a good place as its easy to find afterwards) Once it is downloaded, put a floppy disk in the drive and double click that file boot98sc.exe It will self extract to the floppy drive (formatting the floppy as it goes along so anything on that floppy disk will be gone) Insert this floppy disk into the PC that has the problem. Restart that PC. Choose Start PC with CD Rom support. You will be left with a black screen and a flashing cursor at A:\> This is MS-DOS command prompt. Type smartdrv and press enter. Insert the Windows 98 CD into the CD drive. You will be returned immediately back to the A:\> Now type "XCOPY R:\win98\*.* C:\Win\Options\Cabs\*.* /S /E " without the quotation marks and press enter. This will now copy the Windows 98 installation files to your hard drive. This is for two reasons. 1. So you can run the windows installation from the hard drive and thereby cut the installation time in half 2. If in the future you wish to add or remove any parts of windows your windows will not ask you to insert the cd as it has all the files it needs to complete its task on the hard drive already. If you have an OEM computer such as Compaq, HP or another make of PC you will probably already have these files in the folder C:\Windows\Options\Cabs on your hard drive. Next type C: and press enter. You will now be at the C:\> drive. Type "REN Progra~1 progs" without the quotation marks and press enter. Then type "REN WINDOWS WIN98" without quotation marks (assuming your windows folder is called windows). Now for the fun stuff. If you already have the cab files on your PC in the Windows\Options\Cabs folder then do the following. If you do NOT have the cabs files on your PC then where it tells you to type CD\WIN98\OPTIONS\CABS type CD\WIN\OPTIONS\CABS as that is where we copied the files to in the paragraph above :) Type "SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE /NOSUMMARY /SURFACE /TIME" and press enter and go and make a coffee. This will scan your drive for any errors and attempt to fix them. When this has finished you can exit the scandisk program by pressing X. Now you will be back at the C:\> prompt again. Now to reinstal Windows. Type "CD\WIN98\OPTIONS\CABS" without the quotation marks and press enter. Type "SETUP /IS /ID /IM" without the quotation marks and press enter. This will start the Windows 98 installation without checking the drive (we did this in scandisk earlier, nor does it check the memory or drive space) Choose and alternative folder to install windows into. I would suggest the name WIN. Then follow the prompts until windows has installed itself into the folder called Win. It will restart several times during the installation. When Windows 98 has finished installing you may need to install the drivers for various bits of hardware, such as your video card and sound card. Insert the CD's that came with the pc to do this and follow the onscreen prompts. When Windows has finished installing, you can now do whatever it is you wanted to do in the first place as you will now have a pefectly good working installation of windows. If this is to copy your files to CD before formatting or to run anti virus or to start all over again with a good working copy of windows 98 then you are nearly there. You will need to reinstall ALL of your applications and programmes now that you have Windows reinstalled if you wish to use this copy of windows as your operating system. Once you have copied all of your info and reinstalled all of your programmes you can delete the folders Progs and Win98 if you no longer require any files from there. These are the old folders to your original windows and program files folders. If you are planning on keeping this version of Windows then there are several things you can do to optimise it and get the most out of your working environment. Go here http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog/en/default.asp and download the updates for Windows 98 to your PC. This will save the updates to your PC and not update the windows software. The advantage of this is that in future you will have the updates available. I would suggest burning them to a CD along with the Windows installation files so that you have them all to hand if you have to reinstall windows again. Also do not forget to defrag your hard drive once you have installed all your application. Several websites already tell you how you can optimise your system varying from setting a permanent swap file and adjusting the cache to changing the speed that the menus appear. Use your favourite search engine to find tips and trick on optimising your system. This page is available as a text file so that you can print it out and use it s a guideline whilst you are doing what is described. The other method of using the SFC (system file checker) has not been touched upon because i feel it is a waste of time unless you have updated the database prior to having the problem and after having updated Windows 98 from the microsoft website. Running this without having updated the database will only re-install all the windows files that get installed with some form of installation and therefore overwrite any updated files. You may as well re-install using the method above and save youself the time. ************ Windows 2000 To re-install Windows 2000 or repair the software that for some reason is not working correctly, giving errors, has an infestation of bugs/viruses etc etc or for whatever reason but you dont want to wipe your dirve clean with a format and lose everything you have maybe because you dont have the installation cd's anymore or have an old version of an application and can not download it or whatever the reason: The principle is similiar to Windows 98 BUT due to the security features built into Windows 2000 it is NOT the same and you must be aware of this. The exact same method for windows 98 will not necessarily work for windows 2000 depending on factors such as the file system, FAT32 or NTFS and security/admin issues in windows 2000 that are not present in windows 98. This does NOT cause us a problem at all though, it just requires a little more workaround to get it sorted :) First of all FORGET the SFC /SCANNOW option if you are using Windows 2000. The reason is because it takes so long to complete and will only check the files that were installed on the first install. This is because it checks the file "sfcfiles.dll" to get the file versions and this file is not updated whenever you install a service pack or use windows update site. Any updates you have installed such as service pack 1/2/3 or 4, windows updates etc hot fixes etc will be wiped out with the SFC and you will have to reinstall the service packs and the updates, so you might as well just run the repair option and save yourself the time it takes to check each file in turn. To repair install your windows 2000 just insert the CD into the cd drive and restart the PC. Windows will boot from the cd drive and run setup. On the following screens you will be offered the opportunity to try and REPAIR a faulty windows installation or install a fresh "clean" copy. (if you persist in choosing to install a fresh copy and you install to the same folder/directory it will wipe out your previous version of windows and you will have to reinstall all of your applications again.) You can choose repair from the first time it asks you. If you boot from a Windows 2000 CD, it will allow you to choose between a FAST repair or a Manual Repair. The difference between these two are that FAST repair will check the registry for any corruption corruption, as well as do all the functions of manual repair. Or you can tell windows to install a fresh copy, then install to the same folder as your present windows and the setup programme will recognise you have windows already installed and again ask if you want to repair this install. The two different ways to run a repair are slightly different. The first is suppossedly using the Repair disk that you made when you clicked BACKUP. (but you do NOT need this repair disk. Windows will attempt to repair itself without it.) The other method of running the repair by telling windows to re-install a fresh copy and then choosing the same folder and choosing repair, still repairs the windows folder and files if it can but with a slight difference to the previous one. The latter one runs a complete reinstall of the windows installation whereas the previous method doesnt. The previous (first choice of repair) checks the boot environment, checks the windows files etc etc, and replaces them if they are different versions. The latter method replaces all the files so you get a cleaner install than otherwise. Suppossing you streamlined Service pack 4 into a folder on your hard drive and ran the windows setup from there when you first installed. Now when you try to repair the drive using SFC windows will continually demand that you insert the correct CD because the files on the CD are of a different version to those in the service pack. Therefore the SFC would not work for you. (unless of course you streamlined the service pack and burnt it to cd) Suppose there's some other esoteric reason why the repair/reinstal doesnt work properly and you still dont want to format and lose everything and have to re-install all your applications. Maybe you just want to be able to get a good working windows installed so you can burn your files to CD before figuring out where you go from there? The answer to that problem is simple. Install Windows into a completely fresh folder/directory on your hard drive. Boot to that windows. DO NOT bother reinstalling all the drivers such as your soundcard etc when it finds them on the reboot just click cancel. Boot to the new version of Windows. Burn your programmes and anything else you want to backup to CD, copy the I386 folder from your Windows 2000 cd to your hard drive. Streamline the service pack4 files into it if you wish to. Run anti virus online ( http://housecall.antivirus.com ) When you have done whatever it is that you needed to do, either restart the PC with the windows 2000 cd or if it is on FAT32 and NOT NTFS file system then use a Windows 98 Boot disk available from www.bootdisk.com Restart the PC with this floppy disk and at the A:\> type C: and press enter. Type CD\i386 and press enter. Type Winnt and press enter and the windows installation will begin again and you can then set about repairing/re-installing into your original windows folder. If you are booting from the CD just run through the process of re-installing Windows again but this time choose the install/repair option and install to your original windows folder. When you have finally reinstalled/repaired your original version of Windows you will see that you have a choice of TWO versions of Windows at startup up. Just go to the default version which is the Original version that you have just repaired, go to My Computer, click tools, folder options, view files and show ALL files, do not hide extensions an do not hide protected files (these are check boxes that you need to change) click apply. Double click Boot.ini and look carefully at the lines that say: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect you will notice that the first line says \WINNT="Microsoft and the second line says \WINDOWS="Microsoft as i remembered which folder the ORIGINAL version of windows was in (in this case its WINNT) i can safetly DELETE the second line where it says : multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect and change the number from timeout=30 into timeout=0 The next time you restart your PC it will automatically start with this version of Windows and you will not be asked which version of Windows to start with. The last thing to do here is to actually remove the temporary version of Windows we ceated earlier. This is easily done by going to My Computer, clicking Drive C, finding the temporary version of Windows (which in this case was in the folder \WINDOWS) and deleting that folder. Update to the above: It IS actually possible to run the SFC /SCANNOW from the hard drive and NOT have it asking for the CD everytime it scans a file. But to do this you will need to do certain things first. First of all make sure that you have the setup files installed on your PC, e.g in the folder i386. Make sure that you have streamlined the service pack into that folder. Now you need to edit the registry at the following places and change the setup source. HLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, modify the string value named SourcePath, to read C:\i386\ and also HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and edit any source paths to the correct place. ********** Windows XP Before reinstalling Windows XP it really IS a good idea to attempt to run SFC (System File Checker). This version of Windows, in my opinion, is the ONLY one that SFC should be attempted on if you have never updated the SFC database on 98 etc. The reason being that Windows XP does appear to update correctly this database so that when it checks the files it is checking the latest files installed eg. the service packs/security updates etc etc. To run SFC you WILL need the Windows XP cd. Click start, run and type CMD. The at the black screen type SFC /SCANNOW and press enter. A Windows dialogue box will open telling you to insert your Windows XP cd. Insert this into the drive and follow the onscreen directions. Its really as simple as that. If you do NOT have the Windows XP cd because your PC did not come with one (as a lot of OEM pc's are shipped like this) then you can NOT run the System File Checker. (No doubt someone will come along soon enough to prove me wrong but then this article is not about proving right or wrong but about helping you fix your windows without formatting and losing everything you have written or downloaded) To reinstall Windows XP by starting your computer from the Windows XP CD, follow these steps: 1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your computer's CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer. 2. When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message appears on the screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD. Note Your computer must be configured to start from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. For more information about how to configure your computer to start from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, see your computer's documentation or contact your computer manufacturer. 3. You receive the following message on the Welcome to Setup screen that appears: This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft Windows XP to run on your computer: To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER. To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R. To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3. Press ENTER to set up Windows XP. 4. On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the license agreement. 5. Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press R to repair Windows XP. 6. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to reinstall Windows XP. After you repair Windows XP, you may have to reactivate your copy of Windows XP. You WILL have to install the service packs and security updates. You can also re-install windows by NOT choosing repair. Windows will search your hard drive for a previous installationl. When it finds it you hae the choice, reinstall windows into the same directory in which case windows will remove the previous version and reinstall into that directory. You will then have to reinstall all the applications and programmes you had installed on the other version. Or you can choose NOT to install into the same folder by choosing somewhere else to install it. Windows will then install into your chosen folder thereby giving you TWO versions of windows. The clean one you have just installed and the old one. You can then do whatever is neccessary to save any data you need to save etc before removing the new version if need be. Update to the above: It IS actually possible to run the SFC /SCANNOW from the hard drive and NOT have it asking for the CD everytime it scans a file. But to do this you will need to do certain things first. First of all make sure that you have the setup files installed on your PC, e.g in the folder i386. Make sure that you have streamlined the service pack into that folder. Now you need to edit the registry at the following places and change the setup source. HLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, modify the string value named SourcePath, to read C:\i386\ and also HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and edit any source paths to the correct place. ************* HDD Hard Disk Issues Windows98 Windows2000 WindowsXP If you are having hard drive problems, eg people have told you to fdisk/format, low level format etc etc because your drive has bad sectors or other errors please read on BEFORE you take the drastic step of wiping all your data off the drive. Windows 98 Restart your computer and when the computer beeps, or when you see the text saying "Starting Wndows 98", press the F8 key on the top row of your keyboard. This will bring up a menu. From this menu choose the option saying "Command Prompt Only" (do not confuse this with "Safe Mode Command Prompt Only") At the command prompt (the black screen) C:\> type in "SCANDISK C: /nosave /autofix /surface /summary /time" without the quotation marks and press enter. Scandisk will scan your drive and attempt to fix any problems that it finds. If scandisk does NOT find any errors restart your PC by switching it off and then on again. Let windows start, then click start, programmes, accessories, system tools, scandisk. 1. Check thorough 2. Check the Automatically fix errors. 3. Click the Advanced button 4. Check Only if Errors Found, Replace Log, Delete, Convert to Files, Invalid File Names, Invalid Dates and Times 5. Click OK 6. Click Start Let scandisk run again and let it fix any and all errors it finds. Repeat this until scandisk does not find any errors on your hard drive. Scandisk will have then marked any bad sectors on your drive as unuseable. Windows 2000 Click start, run, type CMD and press enter. At the command prompt type CHKNTFS C: and press enter. This will reply with a DIRTY or a NOT DIRTY response. Type CHKDSK C: /F /R /X and press enter, let it run until it finishes and gives you some statistics. Double click My Computer, right click drive c:, click properties, click tools, click error checking. Check the two boxes and click start. This will more than likely give you an error and tell you it cannot continue, do you want to schedule a scan on the next reboot of the pc. Select Yes. Restart the pc and let chkdsk run its full disk check. This will check the drive for any errors and attempt to repair them. Windows XP Click start, run, type CMD and press enter. At the command prompt type CHKNTFS C: and press enter. This will reply with a DIRTY or a NOT DIRTY response. Type CHKDSK C: /F /R /X and press enter, let it run until it finishes and gives you some statistics. Double click My Computer, right click drive c:, click properties, click tools, click error checking. Check the two boxes and click start. This will moe than likely give you an error and tell you it cannot continue, do you want to schedule a scan on the next reboot of the pc. Select Yes. Restart the pc and let chkdsk run its full disk check. This will check the drive for any errors and attempt to repair them. There is another utility thatyou can use in Windows XP. This is the FSUTIL. 1. click on your start menu and open the run dialog. 2. type "cmd" and return (note: dont enter quotes) 3. Next type "fsutil dirty query c:" 4. If the return message indicates that the volume is dirty go to step 5 5. Next type "chkdsk c: /f /x" 6. After that finshes repeat step 3. 7. Double click My Computer, right click the C: drive and select Properties, click tools, Error Checking. 8. Check the 2 boxes marked "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" 9. Click Yes if it gives you a warning and asks you if you want to schedule a chkdsk on the next restart. 10. Restart your PC and let CHKDSK run a thorough check of your drive. 11. When windows loads, click start, run and type "CMD" 12. Repeat step 3. If it says your drive is NOT DIRTYor CLEAN then you should have no more problems with your drive.