clean install of win 7

[wardD]

hey all, hope you had a good may long.

so i have a freind out visiting, she brought her laptop for me to take a look at. it was running slow, freezing up and had all sorts of malware on it. she has no restore disks and it needed a format bad. we took it into a computer shop and for a 179.oo bucks they would load win 7 (xp was more) and all the needed drivers and such, but you get no restore disks or anything with it. for the same price you can buy the win 7 cd pkg(full install) so thats what we did. then the sales dude says you have to have an existing OS, that seems strange. anyway i had already used my own copy of xp to format the thing and get all the drivers etc (didnt activate it, since I have it loaded on one of my rigs).

we took her win 7 disk and loaded it up, the problem being it didnt format the drive and saved my old install of xp files. we want to take another crack at it but want to format the whole drive and do a "clean" install. can we do this with win 7 or do I have to find my partition magic and format first? I noticed she has 3 partitions, C, D, and thier is one more, no designation, about 5 gigs. I would just use PM but my brother has it and it would be a bit of a drive to go get it so..... any idea,s?

thanks all, ward.

[Steve R Jones]

You should have purchased the Full version instead of the upgrade version...XP can't be upgraded to Win 7 in the typical fashion....BUT, it should have moved all the XP files to a folder called Windows OLD or something like that.

If you look around (google you should the steps needed to do a clean install with an upgrade dvd)

[wardD]

I asked the sales clerk exspresly for the full version. the upgrade was 89.00
I have prety much every win os thir is except millenium so my original plan was to use win98 and just buy the upgrade, but was told it woudent work, (and i geuss it wouldent have since she has a 64 bit machine) I just checked the box and cd labels, its win 7 home premium, no mention of upgrade.

ps, ment to post in tech forum. eys are still a bit blury from the long weekend.

[Steve R Jones]

Then start over with the install...Win 7 will let you zap the partitions and create new ones.

[wardD]

cool, thats what i wanted to hear. it didnt give me that option.

I do have the ZAP program just dont know how to use it off a cd, do,s win 7 have it built in or are you saying zap it?

[Steve R Jones]

ALL OS's give you an option to delete/recreate partitions.....WIn 7 its in the screen where it asks you where you want to install in.

[wardD]

thanks for the info steve, i did see that area, but it was asking where to install.

I will pay more attention this time round and live and learn.

since I am living and learning, I am looking at the paragon back up and recovery program, is it relativley easy to use. Im thinkin it would be good to build her a restore disk(s)
just the os, drivers, AV,etc.

as always, I apreciate your time.

ward.

[wardD]

ok, so i have started the new install. you cant delete the partitions. you have a choice of custom install or up grade, if i go custom it will delete the partition i want to install into and if i go upgrade it just loads windows and keeps every thing.

at the bottom of the instaling windows "window" it says to make changes to the partitions restart the cd, it just does the same stuff over.

I have opened the cd looking for tools,(utility,s) but dont see any. Im almost begining to think this might be just an upgrade. it would say on the box or cd,s wouldent it?? what am I missing!!

[BipolarBill]

You can use a bootable Linux distro *or* UBCD4Win to format the drive. Using your XP PC to create a UBCD4Win CD is the best way to go. Swiss Knife is included and it works fine.

If you did buy an upgrade, no sweat. Do as MidKnyte said and search Google for "clean install Windows 7 with upgrade version". You will find out there. Honestly, all you have to do is install 7 and then install it again. The first install counts as a qualifying product. Do the search.

[wardD]

thanks for being patient, i know i have a couple threads pertaining to the same computer.

i cant find my ubcd4 cd, so gota build a new one.

does it make a differance to the computers that i am building these boot disks for, have diferant OS,s. mine is a 32 bit rig and hers is 64bit rig? my os is vista and hers is (well im thinkin upgraded) from xp home to win 7.

when making them(ubcd,s) I have to copy the i386 file from the os cd dont I ?

I will read up on it again as how you make them.

thanks again.

[BipolarBill]

Answers in order:

1. No - a format is a format and each PC is separate. Don't forget that you cannot upgrade XP to 7 directly anyway so it doesn't matter.
2. Yes - you need the i386 folder. You can use the Win CD directly to build the UBCD.

[wardD]

cool. im workin on the new cd now.

[wardD]

k, copied xp cd to c:\ downloaded and installed ubcd4 to c:\ubcd.

I go to run it and it says i need adminisrative permision, how do i do that?

ward.

[BipolarBill]

You didn't need to copy the CD to your hard drive. I said that you could use the CD directly.

I have no idea why you don't have admin privileges. I suspect malware.

At what point exactly are you denied access?

[wardD]

I click the start auto build tab, a black dos screen window opens, starts welcome to ubcd v 3.0, checks display folders, checks folder paths for spaces,then checking input .inf then it go,s to checking for fat 32 files, thats where the admin pop up comes up, then it says cant find the path specified o files copied. then it just hangs on continuing build.

I should add I am using win xp for the os I copied to the c: drive and using my vista rig to do the build and disk copy. I also copied the entire xp cd not just the i386 file.?

I will take another crack at it this eve after work.

thank you for your time, ward.