On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:00:57 +0000, Rod wrote:

Lobster wrote:
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?

Thanks
David

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.


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.