On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:31:08 +0000, 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

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.