xp home reinstal

[waynezo]

Do I have to reformat my harddrive to reinstal xp home.
My OS was installed by CYBERPOWERPC and came with a recovery cd. Can I use the cd to boot up the system if it won't boot from the harddrive? Also I've been running regcleaner and have defraged my drives(raid array striped 0) Are there any other maintenance tasks I should be doing to keep system running good? The reason I ask is last week my system became unstable and would only boot after several attempts.

[rpertusio]

I'm assuming the Recovery CD will automatically format your drive.

If you had a retail XP CD, you could try the following:
How to Repair Windows XP by Installing Over top of Existing Setup

Maybe the CyberpowerPC CD is similar? If it is a full blown recovery CD, it may not even give you the option to repair, and will automatically format. Be cautious!

(If anyone else knows first hand about CyberpowerPC recovery CD, please add your comments)

- rp

[EvilRick]

You don't HAVE to format, but I'd recommend it.

The Revocery CD should have all the XP Home files on it. You'll just have to do a little hunting to find them. If you boot w/ the CD, does it give you an option to just install the OS w/o any extra stuff?

[HaroldW]

Usually recovery CDs reformat and sometimes repartition, before they restore the operating system and programs (some don't restore programs.) I have seen a few that give a list of options, but this is rare. Everyone "I" have seen warns that it is about to format the drive, and that all data will be lost, before it proceeds.

[HaroldW]

I just noticed you are running RAID-0. Some recovery CD's will only work with the original hardware that came with the system. If you are running software RAID, I suspect there will be a problem (running the recovery CD the way it's meant to be used.) If you are running hardware RAID there is less chance of a problem due to the RAID configuration.