Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Xp

Which OS for my Netbook?

lemonfridge — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:08:52 -0800

What OS for my Samsung NC20? I'm receiving a Samsung NC20 for xmas, which will become my primary PC for web-browsing, iTunes, Picasa etc.

I've already ordered myself a CD/DVD drive to use with it, and a 2Gb RAM upgrade.

Which OS should I install on it? It comes with XP Home, but I have the option of putting Windows 7 on instead (Ultimate 64bit version).

Should I go for 7, XP, or something else entirely (not keen on Linux, but maybe a dual boot?)

ThinkPad T42 wireless connection problem

mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:40:00 -0800

Windows XP Home network connection issues. My son's girlfriend has an IBM ThinkPad T42. In the last couple of days its network connectivity has gone haywire. It has an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG adapter and an Intel Pro/1000MT wired connection, and the laptop is running XP Home, Service Pack 3. Here's what it does:

As soon as I enable the wireless adapter and connect to a network (either secured or unsecured) the connection bounces from disconnected to connected and back again, over and over ad infinitum.

I can't enable the wired adapter at all (it just stays disabled while the "Local Area Connection - Enabling" message shows, after which it disappears with the connection still disabled), which is what makes me think this is a software problem rather than a hardware problem. I have tried all of the following (not necessarily in this order):

1) reset the TCP/IP stack ("netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt")

2) Uninstalled and reinstalled TCP/IP

3) removed and reinstalled the network adapter drivers

4) system restore to earlier restore point

5) installed a PCMCIA wireless card (same result - connected/disconnected over and over)

6) run Malwarebytes (no malware detected)

At this point I am ready to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows unless someone has any better ideas. I don't really mind doing this, but it always irritates me to resort to a reinstall when it seems like there really should be a simpler fix.

Any ideas?

This disc was made for bootin'

CodeMonkey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:10:19 -0800

I would like to make a custom boot disc that is very simple to the user. All it would do is restore an image from 6 DVDs to a hard drive. The only options I would like the user to see is: 1) format drive 2) restore drive 3) exit I would like to create this menu and all sub menus that I see fit. I have seen UBCD but it is too complicated for the people I know. I would like to use Driveimage XML and have it read the discs one at a time to restore the drive. Any suggestions?

Dual Booting For Dummies

mannequito — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:14:17 -0800

Two-part question regarding a potential XP/Ubuntu dual-boot setup: a)Do I still worry about viruses if I'm not accessing the internet from the XP half? b) From reading online it seems that I'll be able to access files from the XP half while in Ubuntu, but will the opposite be true? I've actually never owned a Windows machine so apologies if I seem over paranoid about viruses. I'm just finally considering this in order to be able to record music and use my computer for djing.

And, in case the second question is confusing, what I mean is that as I understand it, anything I put on the computer in Windows will be accessible on the other operating system. But since I would be using Ubuntu for any downloading I'd like to know if that will be readily accessible in XP or if it would require copying it to an external harddrive, booting into Windows, and recopying it?

thanks everyone.

Law-abiding civilian wants to kinda remove personal info from a laptop

salvia — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:41:33 -0800

What are the basic steps to remove personal information off of a hard drive? (XP Home, SP3) I'm trading up a work computer for a newer one. I'd like to make sure to erase things like my frequent flier password, browsing history and downloaded docs, emailed files, and documents I created myself.

I realize many people would find it easiest just to reformat the hard drive, but I'd rather not do that myself, as I don't know what I'm doing or have the disks, plus that'd look more suspicious than leaving behind a few non-work files. I'm not concerned anyone is going to run file recovery software or investigate me, and I don't have any confidential client data that I need to protect. I don't use this for much besides work, and I never save bank passwords, and they're probably going to reformat the computer right away, so I'm not that worried.

I just don't want someone to open a folder and accidentally stumble across some doc I forgot about ("FindingANewJob.doc") or some cached NSFW pic or pdf download that I clicked on in Metafilter, or some embarrassing google search term, or a personal essay a friend emailed me on Outlook that I edited over the weekend. I'm looking for a middle ground between the Department of Defense seven-wipe wiping standard and/or total reformat, and just leaving behind entire folders full of potentially-personal things.

What's a reasonable way for me to clean files and browsing history off of the computer? Is there a good checklist of folders to empty out? Is there a way to know which folders have exclusively system files and which have user-created documents? If you delete a file, then empty the Recycling Bin, is that pretty good or is there one step further you need to take to keep someone from accidentally encountering TMI?

If it matters, I am one of three users on the machine, and I don't know if I have full admin privileges, but I can add and remove programs.

I realize this is a pretty common question, and I've found some decent eHow articles, but I trust AskMe more than my googling skills. Thanks a bunch for any advice you can offer.

Conflicting information and experiences regarding dual-booting Windows XP and 7

feelinggood — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:25:50 -0800

How can I install Windows 7 on a machine that already has XP installed? There seems to be some conflciting information and experiences out there on the web. Assume I know all about partitioning, re-sizing, etc., etc.
A previous question on this exact topic back in January got referred to these Lifehacker instructions. BUT, if you read the Lifehacker comments on these instruction, there seem to be a fair number of problems.
One common suggestion is to use the boot manager EasyBCD (I'm assuming Vista/Windows 7 makes no matter). Would I use this program only to fix a problem, or before I installed Windows 7? Or is Windows 7 a system requirement for EasyBCD?
I've looked at this page from Seven Forums and this one from NeoSmart (the makers of EasyBCD).
By far, the vast majority of answers still seem to point to the Lifehacker instructions, and the Lifehacker people don't seem to have retracted them. Are the small number of problems posted just inevitable?

Subsidiary or alternative question: Could I just install Windows 7 on a USB external drive (assume my BIOS supports booting from that drive). What would happen when I turned the computer on? Just choose which drive I wanted to boot from and proceed?

Help me debug this bluescreen.

DarkForest — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:13:30 -0800

Windows XP Home machine goes blue screen on boot. I'd like to fix it without reinstalling. Details inside. I'm fixing a Windows XP Home machine for some friends. This machine has been fine for a couple of years, but is now going blue screen on boot. I've tried a bunch of things with it, but haven't gotten anywhere. I'd like to be able to fix the machine with all their applications and data intact. I've already made a copy of their hard drive. The computer is a Dell Inspiron 530.

The only recent thing they can tell me they did to the machine was to install then uninstall some facebook toolbar control. This is a family machine, full of games and misc. junk. There's plenty of room on the hard drive.

The only information on the blue screen is the stop message with the numbers 0xC0000005 0x8053A363 0xF7A6D684 0xF7A6D380. No other error message or filename is given. No minidump is produced.

Trying to boot in safe mode shows a list of files being loaded, ending with mup.sys. A second or two after that, the system hangs in a blank blue screen. From what I've read on the net, this does not indicate anything with mup.sys itself, but something that loads after it. Booting Safe Mode with Logging does not produce a boot log.

I've been booting the machine with Ubuntu and UBCD4WIN live disks, and trying the recovery console on the Windows XP install disk. I've run Ubuntu's memory check, and chkdsk from the recovery console, and these seem not to be the problem. I can look at the filesystem and registry with no problem.

I have updated the BIOS, tried removing the video card and using the integrated video. I've run several virus/malware scans. I've tried reverting to older versions of the registry from restore points. I've tried disabling the video card driver and audio driver from the recovery console. None of this has made any difference. I'd like to be able to use the autoruns tool to experiment more with enabling/disabling things, but it doesn't seem to run on an external registry.

So, what am I missing? There must be corrupt or outdated driver or perhaps some malware in there. Dell's site does show several updated drivers, but I can't install them because I can't boot the target OS. How can I trace the drivers being loaded at startup or find out more about where it's blowing up? Any leads would be appreciated.

Also, if you know of a good forum to ask this sort of question in, please let me know.

Thanks for your help.

Want separate desktop on Virtual Machine

hdh — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:13:22 -0800

Question. I upgraded to Parallels 5.0 to run a Windows Virtual machine on my Macbook. The problem is that icons on the Windows desktop show up on the Mac desktop and vice versa. How can I set up Parallels so that both desktops are separate identities that don't impact each other?

Using factory restore disc after factory set RAID 5 configuration change

lyam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:51:54 -0800

Will changing/removing a factory (DELL) set RAID 5 configuration from a home desktop PC interfere with rebuilding the OS (XP Pro) from the factory restore discs? I have a home XP Pro system utilizing a RAID 5 array that was setup by the factory. If I want to rebuild the system, but reconfigure the hard drives as two independent drives, will I still be able to use the factory restore disk to restore the OS? I'm afraid that I only have access to XP from the restore disc (shakes fist at Dell). Thanks!

monitor-splitting software?

gttommy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:24:28 -0800

What's a good monitor-splitting software for finance people who have wide screen monitors? Ideally to allow a computer to almost appear like two separate computers, for windows XP. From what I read, window's "tile vertically" feature is good enough but just wondering what software is out there which adds value without bugs or headaches.

Where's the XP Installer's Undo?

kristi — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:17:38 -0800

A Windows 2000 hard disk got clobbered by the XP installer and is "unallocated". What are my next steps? I have an old PC running Windows 2000 (SP 4). There are 3 internal drives:

D: 40 GB (Win2K system disk)
C: 200 GB
F: 500 GB

Recently, I tried to install WinXP on the C drive so I could dual-boot Win2K and XP. I ran the XP installer (new install, not upgrade); it successfully completed but I could never boot from C; it was giving me various errors about missing hal.dll and stuff. I've basically given up on the dual boot on this machine; I don't need it badly enough to spend more time on it.

After my first attempt to install XP, I discovered Win2K no longer mounts the F drive. It still shows up in the BIOS, but not in Windows Explorer; only the C and D drives show up in the Explorer address bar now.

When I go into Computer Management, I can see the missing drive in the Disk List and Graphical View, but not in the Volume List. In the Graphical View, it shows up as

(left side)
Disc 0
Basic
465 GB
Online

(right side)
[no letter drive here]
465 GB
Unallocated

As far as I can tell from Googling around, the F drive apparently had EZ-Drive on it (I tried Partition Magic 6, and it gave me an error saying "EZ-Drive has been detected on drive 0, but EZ-Drive is corrupt. Run the EZ-Drive setup diskette to correct this problem."), and apparently XP hates EZ-Drive.

I've tried running

fixmbr \Device\Harddisk0\Partition0

(that's the device that shows up using Recovery Console's map command) from the Recovery Console, but it didn't change anything.

The Add/Remove Hardware Wizard can see the drive, too (it says the device is working properly).

I ran Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics on the drive - did the Quick Test - and got

Test completed successfully

The drive shows up in the Physical Drive list in WD Diagnostics, but not the Logical Drive list.

I'd like to just undo whatever the XP installer did to the drive and get it back to where I can read and use it again. If I have to partition it, I can do that, but I'm wondering whether EZ-Drive will remain on the disk (it sounded like that would happen, based on some of the reading I've done) and what effect that would have on anything else I need to do in the future.

I only use this machine for a couple of pieces of software and I'd like to spend as little time as I can getting it working again. If at all possible, I'd love to avoid reformatting/repartitioning the drive. It just seems like there should be SOME way to undo whatever the XP installer did.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

My stupid cursor keeps leaving town!!!

Carbolic — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:54:26 -0800

I'm using Outlook 2003 with Word as my editor on an XP machine. I cannot touch type so I look at the keyboard while typing. My problem is that I will look up and find that the cursor has "left" for some reason and what I have typed has not been entered into the email. I have to move the cursor back to the email and left click before I can type into the document. I have looked up from the keyboard and seen the hourglass appear just before the cursor departs.

I have Googled this to death and apparently just can't find the right search terms. This is driving me crazy. Please help!

How do I change default scan settings?

MrMulan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:44:46 -0800

How can I reduce the file size of a scanned document in Windows XP? I have narrowed it down to something in the XP OS.

Boss has a Canon MFP that would scan to his PC. Test scan file would be about 300Kb pdf.
Boss got a new PC. I installed the same Canon software and used the same settings his old PC used, except now the actual scan takes longer and the file is over 1,000Kb.
I uninstalled the Canon software on both machines and used the built in Windows fax and scan app...same thing...old PC creates a fast scan with small output file, new PC creates a slower scan with a larger output file.
Again, all settings, resolution, ect. are the same on both machines.

I know there is free third party software to reduce after the fact, but I don't want to go there and give him another step to do.

Can't find anything that applies to this scenario on G. As always, thanks in advance.

Trying to get old files from older HDD

Student of Man — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:56:49 -0800

I'm trying to get my old files off of an old Hard-disk. Old PC is XP newer PC is Vista. I removed the Hardisk from the OLD computer. I bought a USB to SATA/IDE cable. When I plug in the Hard-disk via USB, I hear the confirmation tone that you hear everytime you plug in a USB. I see a "ST340082 0AS SCSI Disk Device" in the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the tray. but I do not see the Drive. I can't really afford an External Hard drive. But I will eventually if I have to. Cna anyone help me please.

WIN XP Directory Tree Software help?

dorgla — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:13:54 -0800

Need software which enables saving my Windows XP file directory tree and shows subfolders as a .gif, .jpg or .bmp. Google found some software which saves it as a text file, but I want the visuals of the actual folders in the tree structure.

Fixing a netbook's corrupt registry sans optical drive?

Teira — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:50:25 -0800

How exactly does one go about fixing a corrupt XP registry or reinstalling XP on a device with no optical drive? Okay, so out of the blue with no problems earlier, I start up my netbook (dell mini 10v) and find myself confronted with the lovely missing/corrupted system file error. Now I realize this is going to require some effort with a boot CD, but serendipitously, this laptop has no drive. Now I figure I have three options here for self repair, and I would love to be corrected on these

1) Hopefully there's some way to use my desktop to load the netbook as a target drive, much like holding T at startup on a mac, and fixing things up that way... I have no idea how to do this and googling/mefi...ing aren't proving terribly useful

2) I can figure out how to boot from a thumb drive. I have a fairly speedy 16 gig one, a boot .iso, and my BIOS set to take it first, but I'm a little unsure if I need to do anything special. Do I unpack the ISO into the thumb's root directory? Do I attempt to install windows, onto it and try to use that boot to run a system restore? Again, provided instructions aren't very clear

3) I could force the target drive issue with brute force: ripping open the netbook and shoving the drive in my desktop for intense treatment. I don't want to do this. Please don't make me do this.

Am I being a drama queen here? Are there much easier ways to go about this?

This is a lot of question.

Also since Dell's kind enough to have stopped sending OEM discs with computers, my install discs and .iso are vanilla microsoft installs. I'm going to have horrible, awful driver issues aren't I?

How do I fix this WinXP logon?

imjustsaying — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:34:06 -0800

To begin, click your user name. Huh? I am the only user of my Windows XP Home computers. Until last week, when I booted up a computer I ended up on the Windows desktop.

Since installing a replacement internal DvD drive and it's accompanying software on my office machine, for some reason I now boot up into the screen which has a vertical line down the center, has "To begin, click your user name" on the left side of the screen, and my user name and icon on the right side.

Also, under my user name there's a notification of the number of new emails I've received as well as the number of programs open.

I'd like to go back to booting up into the Windows desktop without having to click through on my user name.

Boot Screen is all out of goose.

Cantdosleepy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:28:17 -0800

Trying to install XP and Ubuntu as dual-boot on a Dell Dimension 3100. The first menu, where I select which operating system to load, is off-centre and starts halfway down the screen. Some of the bottom of the menu appears at the top of the screen. Which means some of the options can't be seen. Help! Example screenshot of the display error (this one during Windows setup)

At the bottom of the operating-system-choice menu screen you can see three different Ubuntu start-up options, but the menu disappears off the bottom before 'XP Home Edition' appears. Through trial and error I've worked out that you have to press the down cursor twice more after the highlighting disappears off the bottom of the screen if you want to select XP. I'm setting this computer up for a not-terribly computer-literate family, though, so that's not really an option.

Any ideas of how to realign this screen?

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

How to format old boot drive in XP when it is no longer the boot drive?

teg4rvn — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:06:07 -0800

How do I format a non-boot hard drive without taking it out? Have been constantly upgrading my PC over time. First hard drive was a 160 GB IDE drive with WinXP. When I needed more space I bought a 640 GB SATA drive and installed WinXP, made it the boot drive, and kept the 160 GB in the system. I then bought a third drive (640 GB SATA) and connected it. I'd now like to wipe the 160 GB drive clean, but when I try to format it, I get an error stating I cannot format it and am asked to quit any disk utilities that are using the drive or to close any windows that are displaying any of the drive's contents. Is there a way I could do this?

Hello, I must be going.

4ster — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:39:52 -0800

While attempting to remove a virus from my in-laws Windows XP Home machine, I have now made it so that it boots to the login screen, and when you click on a username, it logs in and immediately logs my back out, leaving me at the login screen. Oh noes. A few more relevant details:

- It does this in Safe Mode as well.
- They don't back this system up at all.
- I tried to do a repair of Windows using an XP install disk, but it kept asking for an Administrator password. To my knowledge, there isn't an admin password, but I still can't get this to work.
- The file I deleted is still in the Recycle Bin.
- Less than a year ago, my wife and I provided the owners of this computer with a brand new, beautiful grandchild, but at this moment, I don't think that will help me much.

How can I get this thing to boot properly again? Thanks for your help.

What do I not need on Windows 7 Ultimate?

mr_silver — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:52:21 -0800

I'm moving from XP to Windows 7 Ultimate. What, that I used to have on XP, do I not need installed any more? I know that defragmentation software isn't needed, but what about Unlocker? What about disk backup software? Anything else?

install Windows XP on Vista laptop

gigimakka — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:43:49 -0800

Trouble installing windows xp on a vista laptop (Acer 6530) I wiped my acer 6530 laptop hd, and upon attempting to install windows xp, it only recognizes 131 GB of the 250 GB hard drive.

Is this because I did not install the Win XP BIOS before I wiped the drive of Vista? (I have the XP bios on a flash drive, downloaded from the Acer site.) I did change the original Vista bios settings from AHCI to IDE, and boot order to DVD ROM drive first.

I'm considering 2 plans: 1) Install Win XP on the 131GB space I do have, and then install the Win XP BIOS, re-wipe the HD and re-install Win XP, or 2) Re-install Vista, replace those Vista BIOS with the XP BIOS, and then re-wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of Win XP. Which would you recommend?

Alternatives? Thanks...

Audio driver problems!

FuckingAwesome — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:21:32 -0800

Audio driver needed for Sony Vaio VGN-SX61MN/B model laptop with Windows XP SP3! I recently downgraded to XP SP3 from Vista and cannot find a suitable audio driver. The ones on the Vaio website seem not to install properly. Very frustrating! Please help.

Why does the cursor grab my web-page and scroll up (or down) by itself?

Rash — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:58 -0800

Why do windows on my laptop sometimes scroll by themselves, or via touchpad movements? XP newbie with newish Win XP Thinkpad having trouble with cursor and/or touchpad behavior.

I'd like to control scrolling only with the keyboard's arrow or PgUp/PgDn keys, or by dragging the scroll bar with my mouse or clicking its arrows.

And yet, something automagically kicks in with my new laptop -- the scrollbar (and page) moves up and down in tandem with my finger on the touch pad, sometimes even sailing away on its own, even though the cursor's nowhere near the scroll bar -- why?

'Tap to Click' is turned off under mouse -> touch if that's maybe a factor.