I freaking hate Windows XP! Help me format, please.

[Woz]

Okay, I, at times, have been known to suffer from anger issues. Since breaking my hand in early June this year, I've been trying slightly more than usual to restrain my frustration and keep as calm as possible.

That goal is not made any easier to reach by the fact that I wish to pack my computer up nice and neatly in its box, carefully place it in the boot of my car and drive it to my work, placing it gently on the depot floor and then have a 40 foot shipping container dropped on it from above.

To put it nicely, the freakin' thing gives me a bad case of what can only be referred to as the Gar'n Gets! Because I've reached the point where the sum can gar'n get f****d. It plays up to no end, won't do what it's told, has a mind of it's own and all it does is cause me and anyone who goes near it constant grief. I'm almost certain it's built by Holden.

I wish to reformat the bloody thing, but it has that stupid Windows XP on it which I hate and from what I've read online, I need the XP cd to format it. However the reason it has XP on it is because that's what it came back to me with last time it went to the shop to be fixed. So I don't, nor have I ever, had a copy of the Windows XP installation disk.

My question is this:

Is there a way to format my computer and install Windows '98 without using the XP cd, or is there anyone near Bayswater that can lend me a copy of the cd so that I can be done with this monstrosity once and for all?

[MO]

Update...dude you are so behind the times...new puta new progs...better life.

[davocol]

Do not go back to 98, xp is a far better operating system. PM me and I will be able to lend you a cd.

[The Dok]

Hate to state the obvious................have you tried to do a "system restore". Might solve some of the issues. When sold with preloaded XP, the retailer is obliged to give at least a copy of all programs, go see them, I'm sure they'd "copy" XP for you. :jab:

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Woz

I wish to pack my computer up nice and neatly in its box, carefully place it in the boot of my car and drive it to my work, placing it gently on the depot floor and then have a 40 foot shipping container dropped on it from above.

Do this..... and make sure you video it.. I'd love to see that!!! :

[BlueRaven]

I'm gonna have to agree here... XP is a far better operating system, although I like Windows 2000 more.

If you really want to pop a blood vessel though, give linux a try. I'd suggest Ubuntu linux.

[the_scotsman]

98??? Are you for real????

Ok,if you REALLY want to format it you can do several things. Just download a Windows 98 boot disk (floppy) from http://www.bootdisk.com and boot up with this. Use this to FORMAT C: which will work if the XP installation is FAT32.
If its NTFS you need to run FDISK from the 98 floppy and delete the Non Dos partition, then create a new one and then format it.

OR you can go to microsoft website and download the XP boot up floppy disks (works out to be 6 floppies).

But I would seriously advise against it. What do you hate about it?
You can make it "look" like 98 if thats the problem.

[vztrt]

If you do wanna go back to 98. If you got a win 98 startup disk you'll be able to get into MSDOS prompt and format your comp.


Anyone that says XP is great and much better is kisdding themselves any OS made by microsoft is crap.

[Perana]

System restore is evil nice place for viruses / spyware to hide... I always disable it...

[phoon]

dont go back to 98 mate, XP is by far much better.

[Captain Stubing]

Originally Posted by BlueRaven

If you really want to pop a blood vessel though, give linux a try. I'd suggest Ubuntu linux.

I'm running Ubuntu linux.. It'll certainly make you scratch your head more than XP does!

Do the system restore, set it back a couple of weeks/months, and you should be right!

[MO]

Originally Posted by vztrt

If you do wanna go back to 98. If you got a win 98 startup disk you'll be able to get into MSDOS prompt and format your comp.


Anyone that says XP is great and much better is kisdding themselves any OS made by microsoft is crap.

FOOL.....

[Woz]

Oh yeah, and system restore is crap and won't work. My ALT, CTRL, DELETE has been disabled also.

I stand by my previous statement, XP is pox. And I'm not using Linux because I'm not spending money on something that s-h-one-t's me as much as this computer.

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by John McMaster

FOOL.....

OMG I see the light! XP is fantastic!

How many times I have to fix people's computers who run XP, or any Microsoft OS system. It's easy to have a reliable computer, format every six months, reduces the amount of crashes.

[Perana]

XP >>>>>> 9x > Win ME... I run quite a few computers all on XP Pro... Never had one crash yet... same cant be said for 98...

[Casper]

I still want to see the shipping container solution

[The Dok]

Originally Posted by vztrt

Anyone that says XP is great and much better is kisdding themselves any OS made by microsoft is crap.

If Windows were a car......
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating, "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:




1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they painted new lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "CarNT," but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive -- but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "general protect ion fault" warning light.

8. The airbag system would ask, "Are you sure?" before deploying.

9. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.

10. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally Road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

11. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

12. You'd have to press the "start" button to turn the engine off.

[Bucknaked]

I only format to hide the porno sites I've visit :

[Woz]

Originally Posted by Casper

I still want to see the shipping container solution

To be honest, so does the baldman.

[max^power]

Originally Posted by Woz

I need the XP cd to format it. However the reason it has XP on it is because that's what it came back to me with last time it went to the shop to be fixed. So I don't, nor have I ever, had a copy of the Windows XP installation disk.

Legally, a computer shop cannot "preload" software without providing the legitimate media and authenticity sticker. If you did not receive these with your computer, take it back and demand them. If you still get no joy, contact microsoft. The company can preload linux on there, no problems. OEM copies of windows home are cheap compared to the fines dished out.

This is blatant piracy and while microsoft gets bad press, you're still using illegal software - possibly part of the problem. It's not permitted to chat about street racing on here, maybe the issue of illegal copies of windows should be addressed too somehow. Anyone thats written software before will agree that it's not fair on the producers of the software.

Sorry to winge, but i'm sick of these pc shops doing this to people. if they dont give you anything, tell them you're telling microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/default.mspx)

With 98 installed you'll get a virus in 4 minutes.

[the_scotsman]

Originally Posted by vztrt

Anyone that says XP is great and much better is kisdding themselves any OS made by microsoft is crap.

You obviously have NO idea....

And if you keep having to fix peoples computers "all the time" then they must have no idea either...I've been running XP since release as I'm sure a many other people here have, and not had a single problem......

[XplosiveR6]

Originally Posted by vztrt

OMG I see the light! XP is fantastic!

How many times I have to fix people's computers who run XP, or any Microsoft OS system. It's easy to have a reliable computer, format every six months, reduces the amount of crashes.

ok fair enough, name me one operating system that is better then what is offered by microsoft?
microsofts operating systems may not be perfect but they are by far the more efficiant, compatible and effective, and feature packed operating systems availiable. and before you call me a microsoft fanboy, im not i am making a simple observation.
i have used many macOS, linux distros, and every windows/MSDOS operating systems, and unfortunately none compare to windows for sheer speed, usability and compatiblitity. Linux might be a little safer and stable, but what good is that when things take like 5X the time that windows takes, remember time is money

[max^power]

XP has copped a bashing ever since release... why buy it then? Give linux a go, you wont use it forever.. and you'll eventually be back to windows and you will realise it's not that bad.

Too many people bash the system, but still use it! The only problem i've had with XP has been hardware related. It recovers well from faulty hard drives and no, you dont need to reformat every 6 months.

One of my previous machines was running XP for 2 years without 1 format, one hard drive failed in that time, and after cloning the drive to the new one, xp repaired what it could of my NTFS partition, windows worked, all i had to do was re-install 1 program.

If windows is that slow/error prone, maybe it's not your operating system. Perhaps there is a memory fault, bad sectors on the hard drive, problem with your motherboard, viruses, spyware from visiting porn sites or p2p programs - all this can easily contribute to windows crashing, and i bet 1 or more is the problem. Make sure your antivirus program is up to date, windows updates are current, and your antispyware program definitions are up to date. Run scans on your whole pc for virus and spyware.

Get the hardware checked by someone that knows what they are doing - if they say 'reformat' they dont know what they are doing. I'd start with the spyware/virus checks then the memory and hard drive.

[pauljh74]

Of the Microsoft OS range, XP is the best - although I've heard numerous people say Service Pack 2 has given them problems. Linux is better than Windows, but is harder to use and less compatible, this is why Windows is such a dominant product. A bit like why Holden sells more Commodores than Falcons. Real computer geeks/enthusiasts use Linux because they can figure it out - good for them.

[SunDrifter]

Originally Posted by EF_Dave

ok fair enough, name me one operating system that is better then what is offered by microsoft?
microsofts operating systems may not be perfect but they are by far the more efficiant, compatible and effective, and feature packed operating systems availiable. and before you call me a microsoft fanboy, im not i am making a simple observation.
i have used many macOS, linux distros, and every windows/MSDOS operating systems, and unfortunately none compare to windows for sheer speed, usability and compatiblitity. Linux might be a little safer and stable, but what good is that when things take like 5X the time that windows takes, remember time is money

Windows Vista is pretty good so far. Its a little resource heavy, but you get that with all new OS's (sure its a beta, but hey i have a few spare computers, so i can play).

And VZTRT, you can't be serious right? Do you work in IT?? If so, heaven help your end users!

[RED_EL_XR8]

Originally Posted by SunDrifter

Windows Vista is pretty good so far. Its a little resource heavy, but you get that with all new OS's (sure its a beta, but hey i have a few spare computers, so i can play).

And VZTRT, you can't be serious right? Do you work in IT?? If so, heaven help your end users!

A little resource heavy, and Saddam hussein was a little naughty. A new monitor required for yet another Microsoft cul-de-sac if you want high definition. It about time MS or whoever got back int what an OS should be and stripped off all the crap and produced some decent low cost no nonsense operating systems.

Now before we all become heavy handed here about who is the best Sysop, I'll just note that not one respondent has asked what hardware platform the PC in question is? Some base detective work will rule out machines below the minimum requirements but if its say a Celeron 500 with 256Mb of RAM, then some of the advice offered will be very flawed at best. Nor did anyone ask the intended use of the machine, but porn, forum, web surfing and grand theft Dungeons & Dragons would be a reasonable assumption. The latter being the biggest headache.



The Best OS?, next we can argue about the best type of footwear, the best type of RAM, the best size of wheel-nuts etc, or the most perfect teapot.

[big_pete]

Originally Posted by the_scotsman

98??? Are you for real????

Ok,if you REALLY want to format it you can do several things. Just download a Windows 98 boot disk (floppy) from http://www.bootdisk.com and boot up with this. Use this to FORMAT C: which will work if the XP installation is FAT32.
If its NTFS you need to run FDISK from the 98 floppy and delete the Non Dos partition, then create a new one and then format it.

OR you can go to microsoft website and download the XP boot up floppy disks (works out to be 6 floppies).

But I would seriously advise against it. What do you hate about it?
You can make it "look" like 98 if thats the problem.

how do i get this boot disk to work?

ive just been given a second hand computer, that i want to reformat,
how do i get this boot disk to work, i tried it and it said disk error???

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by the_scotsman

You obviously have NO idea....

And if you keep having to fix peoples computers "all the time" then they must have no idea either...I've been running XP since release as I'm sure a many other people here have, and not had a single problem......

I dont have problems with my computer because I actually know what I'm doing, but I'll give MIcrosoft a hard time when every programmer is on a million dollers a year plus stock options you'd expect people that dont know their way around a computer to have minimal problems.

wanna keep windows xp happy?

use good quality hardware, DON'T click on ANY pop-ups from the internet. They trick you, and try and use windows looking boxes, then you clikc cancel, and by clicking cancel, you've just installed 400,000 different spyware and virus programs.

Alot of people bash windows xp, because they don't know computers. I could give you about 500 examples of clients i've had, that stuff up their windows xp, complain that it's too slow, and when i get there, they have hotbar installed, multiple viruses, and spyware coming out of their heads. They wonder why it's slow when there's 80 processes running in the background at startup ..

seriously, learn how to use computers, and then bash windows xp. atleast then ytou'll carry some merit.

Anyway, with regards to formatting, it's easy. Make sure you have a bootable cdrom drive, and a bootable version of the windows xp disk.

Then, start the computer, go into the BIOS by hitting DEL as the computer starts up, change the boot device to the cd-rom drive, reboot, chuck the cdrom in, and it should boot into an easy step by step installation guide to re-install windows.

Just remember to use NTFS for windows xp..

[Uncle_Ken]

Don't go back to ME or 98. Any stuff like games etc are designed to work on XP.

There has been lots of good advice what to do (I want to see the video to Casper). Try and keep it simple.

You will need a bootable copy of XP (with service pack 2).

It will help latter anyway.

I reformat my sons (20 year old) laptop each year to blow away the crap one gets of the net now a days. He stores all his files on a Portable hard drive (120 gig). He uses Yahoo’s anti-spy ware to try and keep the spy ware down. Norton Anti-virus running as well.

If it’s come back from the shop with XP they should have given you a copy of XP (a real one, and bootable). It’s licensed to you and your computer not them.



Uncle_Ken