Question about doing a clean installation of XP

[Klssri]

I am currently running 98 and will be moving up to XP Pro shortly. I have already run the XP wizard to make sure my system will run XP and have already gotten the drivers I might need. Here is my question, I will be doing a clean install with the full version so I want to format my hard drive. This is my current setup: I have two physical hard drives, a 13 GB which is partitioned as C: and E:, I also have an 80 GB hard drive which is D:. I want to format C and E and lose the partition. What is the best way to do this. My other question is, what happens to the programs that are installed on D:. Since I will be formatting C: which is where my current OS is installed, I will be wiping out all of the registry files. Will I have to re-install everything? Hope this makes sense. This is new to me. Thanks for any help.

 

[aquias]

No worries, it's what we're here for!

Okay, first question. To remove the partitions, boot from the Windows XP CD. As part of the setup process it will ask you if you want to format the drive and allow to delete and/or add partitions. I would recommend using this for formatting the drive.

Next question, yes. You will have to reinstall all the programs you have. There are several reasons for this, some of the being the removal of registry entries and .dll removal.

As a side, I would recommend formatting the secondary drive as well and make both drives NTFS. First, make certain you have a backup of all documents and settings you wish to keep.