windows home edition

oldhand

Hi all,seeking a little help for a technically challenged user. I have a windows xp desktop and posted on here before regarding ongoing probs and although I always received good suggestions the probs remained (very slow loading,picture dropping from top to bottom at will) so I got fed up and decided the only solution was to wipe the system and reinstall.
Now the problem was I didnt have a system disc but solved that by ordering up a new genuine microsoft system installation disc.It arrived today and all appears in the box to be what I need,except theres a chip came with the disc.Now I googled the number on the chip and it says its a memory chip.Now what I want to ask is first of all do I need this chip and if so is it a difficult job to install it? A number of years ago I had a desktop and accidently wiped it (still dont know how) but then I had the disk and it was a simple job to reinstall it.So is it just a matter of putting in this new disc and reinstalling and all will be well or have I over reached myself with this? Any comments welcome and one last thing if I can just use this new disc do I need to wipe the computer first and if so how? many thanks.

Browntoa

I suspect the copy of XP is OEM , which means it can only legally be sold when building a system. The memory keeps it ( in a grey manner) on the right side of the law. Just install the copy of XP

oldhand

Browntoa wrote: »

I suspect the copy of XP is OEM , which means it can only legally be sold when building a system. The memory keeps it ( in a grey manner) on the right side of the law. Just install the copy of XP

many thanks browntoa,yes the product key with this also has the letters oem software on it and the sticker says "you are required to affix this certificate of authenticity to the exterior of the computer" Does that mean its "iffy"? and on my other point is it just a matter of putting the disc in or do I need to wipe the system first?

Browntoa

is not iffy

you get an option to format the hard drive first , if all your data is off then choose that option and do a fresh install

boot the PC from the CD , you will need to change the boot options in BIOS (normally F1 or F2 as the PC boots) and make sure the cd drive is the first boot option

s_b

the disc will ask you if you want to keep old information and the old windows or do you want a clean install so go for clean
it will also come to a section where you might have partitions on your hard drive and it will ask you where it wants you to install
just follow the questions and you cant go wrong
takes ages mind about 40 minutes all in


when information has been downloaded from cd the computer will turn itself off and on and then ask if you want to load the cd ignore this or it will start from the beginning because as browntoe says you load the cd first in the bios
once everything is working go back to bios and return to how it was (make a note)

oldhand

Hi back again and ran into prob,disc is loading files then comes to choices,partition 1 (fat) 55mb (47 mb free)
c: partition 2 (ntfs) 72638mb (53136 mb free)
unpartitioned space 8 mb
f: partition 3 (fat32) 3585mb (1726mb free)
unpartitioned space 8mb.
its asking me to set up windows select an item and press enter,which one do I use please?

Browntoa

c:

its the one with the current version on

oldhand

Browntoa wrote: »

c:

its the one with the current version on

many thanks browntoa,its all installed,one last thing all the icons are very large and I have been looking how to make them smaller but no luck,could you point me in the right direction? thanks. (and yes the inside workings of a computer are not my forte.......

Notmyrealname

You need to get all the hardware drivers for your computer.

johnmc

Before going online load and update an Anti-virus.

Run Windows Update from the Start menu.

Right click on the desktop and select Properties. Set to a suitable resolution.

Update all your hardware drivers.

oldhand

Notmyrealname wrote: »

You need to get all the hardware drivers for your computer.

Thank you,should the disc I got not have them on it? or where would I go looking thanks..