reinstalling windows vista.

dori2o

OK.

Many people have followed my previous posts regarding a not very nice virus/spyware I have on my PC that has been an !!! to remove, and I've had to admit defeat.

So, a very kind friend has given me a HDD to transfer my wanted files onto so I can format the master HDD and reinstall vista.

Now, how do I do this.

I have a vista disk, but when I put it in the dvd drive and restart the PC it will not boot from the disk.

The 2 HDD I have are as follows:

Fujitsu 250GB SATA2 drive. (Master)

Maxtor 160GB IDE drive. (Slave)

Would it be possible to make the 160GB the drive on which the OS is installed?

The master drive has no Jumper so how could I make that the slave?

Any advice would be helpful.

tomfun

you need to enter your bios by pressing delete of one of the F keys before windows boots up,then you need to change your boot sequence from h.d.d. to dvd rom, then save the settings and restart you computer with the disk in,then follow the on screen instructions.

Jaffa.

dori2o wrote: »

Now, how do I do this.

I have a vista disk, but when I put it in the dvd drive and restart the PC it will not boot from the disk.

You have to enable boot from CD in the BIOS, you also (when it goes to boot from the dvd) have to press any key when it tells you to otherwise it carry's on to boot from the hard drive.

dori2o wrote: »

The master drive has no Jumper so how could I make that the slave?

SATA2 drives do not use jumpers, just a single slim cable - what you will have to do is hook the IDE drive up to where the CD/DVD drive currently is (i take it that uses the IDE large grey flat cable and not the slim SATA one) Set it as master.

Would it be possible to make the 160GB the drive on which the OS is installed... you would really want to use the SATA one as the OS drive as it's faster and bigger. Is it possible, maybe... depends if you can get the cable to run by both optical and Hard drive, setting HDD as master and CD drive as slave, however your backing up your dater to this so any OS install to that drive will wipe all that data off.

4743hudsonj

is it just me or do you risk infection once you put your new files onto the slave drive and put the slave drive on to your reinstalled os

Jaffa.

4743hudsonj wrote: »

is it just me or do you risk infection once you put your new files onto the slave drive and put the slave drive on to your reinstalled os

Depends if you copy over an infected file or rootkits could find their way onto the drive, you would have to make sure that the slave drive is clean of malware first. It would be worth scanning the slave drive with the Bitdefender's online scanner just to make sure nothings on there

dori2o

OK, another problem now.
I've gone into the bios and set the DVDRW as the primary boot drive but it still will not load from the disk.

However, I think this may be linked to a problem I have with programs not picking up my DVD drive. if I use Nero or imgburn they only pick up the virtual drive, not the dvdrw.

Can anyone suggest my next steps.

This is really getting annoying now.

dori2o

Well I've just tried uninstalling the dvdrw drivers, then rebooting and letting windows reinstall the drivers but nothing is coming up.

I really am stuck now.

Was thinking of trying installing windows 7 to see if that fixes anything.

Or formatting the IDE HDD and disconnecting the SATA drive, installing Vista, then reconnecting the vista drive making the IDE HDD the primary boot drive, transferring the files I want from the sata drive to the ide, then trying reboot from the disk and installing vista on the Sata drive,transferring the wanted files back from the ide drive to the sata, then formatting the ide drive again.

Long winded and I'm not so sure it would work, but I'll accept any advice at the moment.

dori2o

OK new idea. I have this 2nd HDD I installed and scanned yesterday. Can I install Linux on there and then run my system via linux?

Could this bring the DVDRW back into play so to speak, (i.e. would the dvdrw likely work running through linux)

I'm getting desperate now, any help would mean more than I can put into words.

Jaffa.

Have you tried setting the DVD drive to cable select on the jumpers, it might help the BIOS detect it and bring it back into play. Hows the computer set-up at the moment? Have you backed up all your data onto that drive and reconnected the optical drive? If so it's just a case of putting the vista disk in and formatting the SATA drive. Yeah check all the connections to the optical drive and set it to cable select