www.mydfz.com > Valerie's Interests > Reinstalling Windows

Reinstalling Windows

I'd been having some minor problems with my 60Gb C: drive and it had been a while since I installed it so I decided it was time to upgrade to a 120Gb. It turned out to be quite an experience with a few important lessons along the way. I'm sorry but I didn't take good notes on all the mistakes and false starts that I made. I wish I had but I didn't know this was going to grow into such a big job at first. So, from what I did document, here's the story...

I got a new Western Digital 7400rpm 8Mb cache 120Gb drive and installed Windows 2000 from scratch. Just about the time I had everything installed and configured the way I like it, the new drive started acting flakey. I'd come in in the morning and find "unable to access boot device" or other errors on the screen. I was always able to resurrect it but I knew the handwriting was on the wall.

At this point my normal inclination is to run Spinrite (www.grc.com) which is the best test of a hard disk I know of. Unfortunately it won't operate on NTFS formatted drives so I couldn't use it! I finally ordered yet another 120Gb drive. This time I got an IBM with only a 2Mb cache. I didn't want any chance of getting another drive from the same batch!

I also bought a copy of PowerQuest's Drive Copy. (http://www.powerquest.com/). I tried to use it to copy the bad 120Gb C: drive to the new one but it wouldn't work - read errors on the source disk and one reported error writing to the new one caused the program to fail. I then tried to copy from the old 60Gb drive but that failed also. It managed to copy about 5.9Gb out of 6.7Gb on the drive and the result wasn't bootable. You'd think they'd have made the program more rugged since a lot of people would probably get it to try to salvage a situation like I was doing. I'm not very pleased with the product. Seems like it costs too much for the little it does especially when it doesn't seem to do that very well. Still, there are some mitigating factors so read on...

At this point I was sort of stuck. I had to start over and reinstall Windows 2000 from scratch again. The first time I spent about 3 weeks (not full time) getting everything copied and configured just right. This time I was under more time pressure so it mostly got done in about 4 days of constant disk shuffling, rebooting, and waiting. Here's kind of a play by play as I recorded it as it happened.
Note that this may not be the optimal way to do this job but it is the sequence I followed.
Note: This whole process required LOTS of reboots so I'll keep track with a number in parentheses each time I note a reboot.

1) Install Windows 2000 including one service pack that I had on CD.

2) Install NVidea drivers and set the screen to 1024x768, high color

3) Insall Gigabyte GA-8XIRP motherboard drivers (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/)

Win9x/2000/xp inf update utility. Also from the left column, "Audio" creative CT5880 sound drivers. From Device manager, Ethrenet drivers - search CD, and USB controller.

4) Install Samsung ML-1650 printer driver.

The Device Manager still showed an error on the device but a reboot(1) solved it.

5) Install 6-in-1 card reader driver. Reboot(2)

6) Install Casio Label Printer drivers for the KP-C10 printer Reboot(3)

I had to go to the Device Manager (which I'm going to start abbreviating "DM") and re-install from C:\winnt\system. (I don't remember what that was all about but that's what my notes said.)

7) Install Kodak DC-325 mini-camera drivers.

This camera is the best one I've seen to date for a monitor-top camera! I've tried several other brands and none of them is as good at handling light levels, focusing, image size, refresh rate, etc. I guess it makes sense Kodak could make a good camera.

8) Computer Management - partition hard drive

I reset the drive letters used by the 6-in-1 card reader to use the bottom of the alphabet so they wouldn't interfere with other drives. Reboot(4). I then created D:, E:, F:, and G: drives from the unused space on the disk 27,402Mb each. You can bet that this time I made everything FAT32 instead of NTFS! I got an error formatting E: so I ran Spinrite on the drive at the level 4 setting. It ran overnight and finished Drive C: and half of D: and was still running in the morning. I suspended the run, shifted down to level 3 and did the E: drive. No errors found on any of them. If Spinrite doesn't find errors, there probably aren't any errors there!

9) Copy files from old drive

Using Drive Copy I hid the old C: drive and booted the new 120Gb drive with the old 120Gb drive present as well. I then copied all my data and downloads from my D: and E: drives to the new drive. I generally use C: just for the operating system and maybe some drivers or programs that are tightly tied to the OS. The D: drive contains my data files, E: is downloads and programs are on F:. G: is kind of a catch-all area for anything that doesn't fit somewhere else. Keeping things separated this way makes it easier to back up or copy files without missing anything critical. It's also easier to find things.

 

According to the documentation for PowerQuest's Drive Copy program, "WARNING! Before you reboot your computer, ensure that you do not have two identical operating system partitions visible. To avoid possible corruption, you must remove the old hard disk from the computer or hide the operating system partition before rebooting. If there are two identical operating system partitions on the computer when you reboot, your operating system could be compromised.". I have had that situation as I tried to copy files from one drive to the other and I think I experienced some of the corruption from it. That's why I hid the C: drive this time. I just wish I knew WHY this caused corruption. It doesn't make much sense to me. Anyway I think I later figured a way around the problem. I put the old hard drive in an external USB2.0 box and copied the files off of it from there. Since it isn't online at boot time, I don't think there is any danger of corruption and so far I haven't experienced any. These external USB boxes are available at The Downtown Fun Zone.

10) Set up DNS on TCP/IP network protocol

Interestingly at this point, I could now see the other computers on my network even though I hadn't installed NETBEUI. My Cisco instructor kept saying that that was the case and that NETBEUI wasn't needed, but I hadn't seen it work like that before. I later added NETBEUI anyway to try to keep file/device sharing off TCP/IP and because the discovery process on TCP/IP to find the other computers seems to be much slower and less reliable than with NETBEUI. My network is small enough that the extra overhead isn't important. Interestingly I seem to have less control over network configuration with Windows 2000 than I did with Win98. I suppose that means I'm overlooking something.

11) Windows Update (part 1)

Now that the network was back up, I logged into Windows Update service and started installing updates. I got the IE6 SP1 update. Reboot(5). It was about 11.5Mb. I then tried for the 13.2Mb Windows 2000 SP3 but it hung at some point. (Yes, I have high-speed Internet).

12) Replace power supply

At this point I was still having some flakey behavior. It was better than before but not what I'd call stable. The BIOS system health reported the 12V line was only 11.52V which should be within tolerance but only barely. I decided to swap out the power supply which I did. The new supply showed 11.64V to 11.7V but the system seems much more stable. It may be that I had three problems interacting - low 12V power, erratic hard drive, and corruption caused by earlier attempts to copy from one drive to another without hiding the boot partition of the second drive first (see step 9). Since this step, everything seems to be working as well as any Windows system ever does. I also ordered a 300W power supply just in case but decided not to use it when it arrived.

13) Windows Update (part 2)

Back to the Windows Update service. Got Win2k SP3 and a long laundry list (over 33Mb) of other patches. Reboot(6+ - I didn't record each reboot here. Oops.)

14) Windows Update (part 3)

Continued from previous day. Another 8Mb or more of patches and recommended updates. I think I now have more patches than I have original code. Reboot(7 & 8)

15) Install Microtek Scan Wizard 5 for Microtek 4900 scanner. Reboot(9)

16) Install Office 2000 Pro

It's easy to overlook the second CD but if you don't install it too, you don't get Microsoft Publisher. I also installed SP2 from CD. Reboot(10 and maybe more)

17) Copy files from old drive

In step 9 I had copied the files from the old 120Gb drive except for those on C: which I had hidden. I wanted my Outlook email files and they were on C:. It was at this point that I thought of putting the drive into an external USB 2.0 drive box. Because the drive doesn't need to be live at boot time it doesn't seem to cause any problems. I've really gotten to like the external box. With USB 2.0 it really flies. Even when plugged into a USB 1.0 port it isn't too bad. To make my life even easier, I kludged a removable drive bay into the external box so I can swap drives directly into the computer or into the external box. Pretty cool. Here's a picture:

I kenw from prior experience that copying the *.pst file alone wasn't enough. This time I copied everything from

C:\Documents and Settings\<account name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

and from

C:\Documents and Settings\<account name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

When I brought up Outlook, everything looked just like always. Well, almost everything. I should also have copied the signatures and if I used it I'd probably also want the stuff from the stationary folder too.

This brings up one of my pet peeves with the design of Windows. Programs should NOT put pieces of themselves nor configuration information into common system areas. It leads to no end of conflicts and difficulty in finding parts of programs when trying to make a backup or salvage a system. Much better when a program installs itself and all of its pieces solely into it's own private directory or directory tree. If necessary, a link could be put in the system area pointing to the program's files but the files should keep to themselves!

18) Install Antivirus software

Maybe I should have done this sooner but I knew my disks were clean and I was only visiting the Microsoft Update web site which should (famous last words) be safe. From virii anyway. Still, I probably could have taken damage when I started my email program so I'd have to say I made a minor mistake. A full system scan proved that my brief lapse didn't result in any contamination.

19) Get updates for the antivirus software

After all updates were applied, I ran a full system check (497,623 files and I haven't hardly installed anything yet!) Then guess what? There were more updates for the A/V software. Reboot(11)

20) Install PCE

PCE is the freeware Perl Code Editor (http://www.perlvision.com/pce/) for editing Perl programs. A great piece of software and it's free!

21) Establish shortcuts

Some programs are nicely behaved and can be moved around and used without having to be re-installed. I had copied them earlier when I copied my E: drive. Now I needed to create shortcut icons on my desktop for programs including PFE (Programmer's File Editor - another great freeware editor http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/), Hview (a hex editor) (I don't have a home page link for Hview but you can get it freeware from http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/Windows/123/7.html or get the free Hackman, arguably a better editor, at http://www.technologismiki.com/hackman/) and several other programs that I find handy. I also copied a shortcut to the C:\Documents and Settings\<account>\Send To folder so that they would be choices for the right mouse click "Send To" menu.

21a) Install Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1

Available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. This is needed to read any of the many PDF files found of the World Wide Web including copies of our newspaper at http://www.mydfz.com/dfz-pot.htm

22) Install Ultimate Zip 2.7 (http://www.ultimatezip.com/)

There are a lot of unzip programs out there. Some shareware and some freeware. I wanted one that could handle a good selection of formats (zip, arc, lha, zoo, etc.) but was free. This was one of several finalists I found and, so far, I like it very much.

23) Install Pagemaker 7.0

I have to install it using the "typical" settings because when I tried to use "custom" some time ago, it crashed the system or hung or did something else unpleasant. I don't remember the details. Any the "typical" install works. I then installed the Acrobat Distiller and downloaded the 7.01 update from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com) and upgraded to it.

24) Install Paint Shop Pro 7 10th anniversary edition

This is one of my most-used programs. I use it to scan in pictures, to edit them, to browse the images on my hard drive, etc. I have Adobe Photoshop and perhaps a dozen other image editing programs but this one wins hands down and it's not even very expensive - about $100 compared to the $500 for Photoshop! It can even use Photoshop plug-ins! Highly recommended! http://www.jasc.com.

25) Install Quickbooks Pro 2002. Reboot(12)

After the reboot, the system came up with my wallpaper but with no icons on the taskbar. I had to reboot(13) again and then the system came up ok. I then used the built-in QB update feature to get the available updates.

26) Install Savin 9935 printer drivers

Our photocopier has a built-in network port and serves as an additional printer on our network. I installed the drivers to make it work. Reboot(14)

27) Install Tektronix Phaser 740 Printer Drivers

This is our color laser printer. Tektronix printers are now a part of Xerox. I have to say that the tech support has been great on this, at least till the warranty ran out. Ongoing service was too expensive for me though probably worth it. The printer is very modular and a dream to work on.

28) Copy fonts from the old C: drive

Again using the external USB box.

29) Set up address bar at top of display. Reorganize start menu programs.

Here are a couple of really cool things you can do with your system. Right click on an unused blank part of the task bar at the bottom of the screen. (NO, not on the start button nor in the box at the right with your date, volume control, etc. just find a blank spot outside those areas.) Choose "Toolbars" and turn on "Address" if it isn't already checked. The task bar will be divided with part for tasks and part for the address bar. With the left mouse button, drag the address bar to the top of the screen. Right click on the word, "Address" at the left edge of it and select "auto-hide". When you move the mouse away the address bar will (eventually) hide itself. If you move the mouse back to the top of the desktop, it will re-appear. If you type a Web address into it, it will take you to that address (assuming you're connected to the Internet.) It's faster and easier than bringing up the browser first since you don't have to go to some default page that you may now want anyway before you can tell the browser where you do want to go.

 

Reorganizing start menu programs is something that too many people don't do. Go to Start / Settings / Task Bar & Start Menu / Advanced / Advanced. This brings up Windows Explorer focused on the Start Menu under "Documents and Settings". This area is just a set of folders and shortcuts which can be created, moved, deleted, etc to organize your programs the way you want them. You may have several sets of Start Menus - one for each account including Administrator (or whatever you've renamed it), All Users, Default User, and one for each user account defined. (Well, actually they don't get created till the user logs in the first time so there may be some defined users who don't have a tree yet.) Anyway, I like to create folders such as "Microsoft", "Utilities", "Games", etc. and move the appropriate icons to them. When I'm done, my Start Menu / Programs display shows only the folders and all program icons are categorized into one of the folders somewhere. If you choose good folder categories you shouldn't have much trouble finding your programs. Note: Some programs may install to one account and some to others - just create folders with the same names in each of the accounts as needed. When you click on Start / Programs, it will pull all the pieces together for you like magic. It's a lot easier to do than to describe. Here's a tutorial: http://howto.lycos.com/lycos/step/1,,9+50+35819+36763+36768,00.html or you can go to http://www.google.com and search on "how to reorganize the start menu programs" (without the quotes.) I got about 7000 hits including the preceeding link.

30) Copy files from old drive

This time I grabbed my Microsoft Word macros and templates, my Internet Explorer favorites, and my old "My Documents" files.

31) Install Omnipage Pro 12

I've used Omnipage for a long time and it's gotten very, very good! I (and a lot of others) have had trouble installing version 12 and I almost sent my copy back. The company finally sent a replacement CD and I've had no further trouble. http://www.scansoft.com/

32) Copy files from old drive

This time it was the Outlook signatures I needed

33) Install Adobe Pagemill 3

Pagemill is a great program for creating web pages. In fact, that's what I'm using to create this. Unfortunately it is no longer being produced. Bummer. Next best choice - First Page by Evrsoft, see below.

34) Install Nero 5. Reboot(15)

I didn't install the "InCD" part of the package. It supports CDRW and I don't find CDRW useful for my work. Compared to CD-R, CDRW is slow, incompatible, holds less data, doesn't do music disks, costs more, and the disks need to be preformatted. I know there are people who can benefit from the ability to rewrite data but it's disadvantages outweigh any advantages for me.

35) Install Calendar Creator 7

Looks like it's past time for me to upgrade this one. Oops.

36) Install Labels Unlimited 2

This is another program that never seems to have an upgrade. Anyone know of any new and improved programs to which I should consider switching?

37) Install Adobe InDesign 2.0

InDesign was supposed to be the new replacement for Adobe's Pagemaker. It really does have many new and improved features but versions 1.0 and 1.5 were slow and very buggy. Version 2.0 is ok but they left out the booklet making uility which is absolutely critical for my operation. You can buy an add-on program to do that for about $100 (http://www.alap.com/products/inbooklet.html) but that seems awfully expensive for such a single-purpose tool. Besides which, I'm not sure the tool has exactly the same functions as the Pagemaker tool. Bottom line for me is that I still mostly use Pagemaker.

38) Install Adobe Acrobat 4.0

This is the full distiller product so I can create PDF files from any Windows program. I need to update to the new version 6 but haven't done it yet.

39) Install CorelDraw Graphics Suite 11

Then Reboot(16). I aslso instaled Quicktime 5 from the Corel Extras CD. I also copied the graphics files to the hard drive so I won't have to fool with the CD when I want one of them.

40) Install Active Perl 5.8

I found the Perl programming language perhaps two years ago and I LOVE it! You can get the interpreter free from http://www.activestate.com/ though you may have to hunt around a bit to find the right place in their web site. It gets a bit confusing because they also sell a commercial version of Perl. Several other languages/tools are available from them as well. One of the neat things about Perl is that it is extensible. You can add a "package" very easily with PPM (The Perl Package Manager) and it then becomes part of the language for your system. Even the documentation gets integrated into the online docs. Way cool! There are many, many packages available and more all the time. If you get stuck on something, the mailing lists are very helpful.

Reboot(17)

After installing Perl, I used PPM to install DBD-ODBC, DBD-AnyData, and DBD-mysql. I also configured ODBC access to a database that I query with a Perl program. I will probably have to install more packages later but this version of Perl seems to have many more packages built-in than the older version had.

41) Fix a loose cable on the A: floppy drive

Oops! I must have pulled this loose while fooling around with the hard drives, installing removable bays, etc. much earlier in the process.

42) Install Microsoft Agent

I haven't found any use for this yet but it's a hoot to play with. Free from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/default.asp

43) Install Microsoft Picture-It Publisher

It takes forever to install this because there are so many CD's and it seems to be slow at copying files from them.

44) Install Family Tree Maker 10

This is my main genealogy program. I also like The Master Genealogist by Wholly Genes software.

45) Install removable bay in external USB Box

This is so cool! See photo at step 17. I had been swapping drives into the USB box but that requires a lot of fiddling with the data and power cables. By putting a removable drive bay in it, it's very easy to swap drives (just push the new cartridge in and turn the key) and I don't have to reboot Windows to change drives! I have two identical removable bays in the computer as well and some in other computers. Now I know I have to be more careful about swapping drives around (see step 9 above) but I still find it plenty useful. Some reasons for using removable bays include the ability to have different boot drives for different operating systems (just change the drive and your Windows system is now a Linux system, for example), Keeping different people's programs/data separate (one drive for work, one for play, one for the kids, one for spouse, etc.), Taking large projects home to work on then bringing them back, Security (don't want your spouse to know about your collection of pictures of antique buggy whips? just put it on a removable drive.) and probably many more things your creative mind will think of.

46) Copy files from various partitions on the old drive to the new hard disk.

As I install this stuff, I've started rearranging a few things too and this was more rearranging than anything else.

47) Reorganize Start menu programs. Again.

See step 29.

48) Install The Font Thing

The Font Thing by Sue Fisher (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/tft.html) is a very nice freeware program to view and manage your Truetype fonts both the installed ones and any others you may have that are not installed. I've tried a number of such programs but this is my favorite to date. I have about 500-600 installed fonts and I don't want to even think about how many I have that aren't installed. When you have that many, you really need something like The Font Thing!

49) Install Partition Magic 8

As part of the process I made recovery disks. Many years ago I bought a copy of Partition Magic - I think it was version 2 - and it was so bad I sent it back for a refund. That's something I've rarely done but I was pretty upset with it. Along about version 4 I was persuaded to try it again and I found it had been very much improved. It's been a keeper ever since and version 8 is the best yet. It's not the kind of program you use every day or even every month but when you need it, there just isn't any substitute! http://www.powerquest.com/

50) Share my printer

I also checked which drives, if any, were being shared.

51) Windows Updates

One more time! A neverending process.

52) Install Windows 2000 Resource Kit

I used the "typical" install. The Resource Kit has a lot of tools for system management, etc. Resource Kits are available from Microsoft for each of their different versions of Windows.

53) Install Spybot

I downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy from http://security.kolla.de/. It is freeware. As you surf the web or install programs, there are a number of things that can happen to your computer. Some sites create "cookies" on your hard drive. Most cookies are benign and many are very useful for retaining your personal information from visit to visit to a given web site. Some however, can be used by advertisers to track your surfing. Some programs also include unwanted programs that can report on your computer usage or web browsing. Such invasive spyware should be removed but how do you find it? I used to use a program called AdAware (http://www.lavasoft.de/) by Lavasoft but then I found Spybot and I think it does a much better, more complete job.

54) Install WinMX 3.31

Download it (free) from http://www.winmx.com/. This program allows you to share files with thousands of other computer users. You may have read about the copyright suits over people sharing mp3 music files. Well, this is one of the programs to facilitates such sharing. Actually according to a report I recently saw, this kind of program is now more often used for sharing porno pictures and movies than for music. It's also useful for sharing any other kind of computer file. While there are illegal and immoral uses for the technology, there are also many valid, legal types of files being shared. Caveat Emptor. If you elect to use a program like this be very sure you have good virus and intrusion protection on your computer.

55) Install First Page

I've tried a number of programs designed to help create web pages. My favorite is still Adobe's Pagemill (see step 33). Because it is no longer being sold or kept current with new technologies, I've looked around for a replacement. I tried a commercial program called HomeSite and was pretty happy with it though there were a few annoyances. I then found out that Evrsoft (http://www.evrsoft.com/) had a free program called First Page that was very similar to HomeSite. I tried it and it is now my second favorite web page construction tool. It's a bit more "techy" than Pagemill but it produces cleaner code. Unfortunately, it's been hard to find lately. Included with some JavaScript code samples in it was a "practical joke" called "Six Buttons From Hell". I understand that if run, it causes Internet Explorer to open many windows until it crashes. This code sample is a separate file and is not needed for First Page to be fully functional so it can easily be deleted. When I installed First Page, my anti-virus software detected the file and deleted it automagically for me. Because many people got worried about virus warnings on the package a lot of download sites no longer offer First Page and it can be a bit difficult to find. One place that still has it is http://download.yohost.com/1stpage.htm.

56) Install Windows Media Player 9

I didn't want to do this but I downloaded and installed Windows Media Player 9 from the Windows Update site. There are some DRM (Digital Rights Management) issues with it that I'm not happy with but I ran into something that I wanted to view and it required a newer version of the player than the one that came with Windows 2000.

57) Install Winamp 3 Full

Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/) is my favorite program for playing music or sound files on the computer. It's another freebie.

58) Install Zinio

Zinio (http://www.zinio.com/main) is a program for reading certain magazines on the computer. I've got a number of mixed feelings on this but since they gave me a free subscription to one of them, I'm kind of tied to it at present. At least this way, the house doesn't get cluttered with back issues and it must save a lot of trees! Maybe I'll even grow to like it but until I can read it on the throne, there will be benefits to the printed versions.

 

Well, that's it as far as I've documented it. I've still got dozens of things to install so maybe I'll add to this page in the future. Meanwhile I hope you found this interesting or at least useful.

Valerie Kramer
May 3, 2003