How to wipe disk/reinstall XP

[Ripshod]

I have a 3-year-old HP desktop. It came with Win98 and I later bought XP to upgrade. I'm buying a new computer and I want to give the HP to my ex-wife. (She's really a nice person - a whole different subject.)

I have already saved everything worth saving to CD. I want to wipe the disk clean and give it to her as a virgin system. I have my genuine XP disk but I don't know how to go about it. The disk's start menu doesn't have a 'start over' option but it seems that it shouldn't be that hard to do if you know what you're doing.

The XP disk is version 2002 and I know I'll have to install SP2 and probably update IE to the latest version (that's a separate upgrade, right?) and I'll probably install Acrobat Reader. I have broadband and she'll be on cheap dialup, so it's a lot easier to download apps before she gets it. What else should I download to make it more usable for a person who's even less computer savvy than I? She won't need lots of bells and whistles, but I don't want to forget something that she'll need for basic computing and net surfing.

BTW - she will also receive the XP disk and I will do the hookup at her house and install her printer for her. Yeah, I'm a nice guy.

Thanks,
Jerry
Knoxville, TN

[pip22]

To clean everything off the C drive just boot up with the XP CD. You'll need to ensure that the system is set to boot from the cd-rom drive first in the BIOS. When XP setup begins it will automatically detect that there's already an OS installed, and it will tell you which key to press for your various options. These are the options you should go with:
1. Select the current C partition and tell XP setup to DELETE that partition.
2. Now tell XP setup to CREATE A NEW PARTITION on the unallocated space (the partition which has just been deleted)
3. Then tell XP setup to install Windows on that new partition. Windows XP setup will then first format the partition which may take a while, then it will start to copy files for installing Windows. When it's up and running, install SP2 which will beef up the security and will also bring Internet Explorer up to date -- (hasn't been updated since SP2). Make sure you switch the Windows Firewall on (SP2 update should prompt you to do that anyway), and install an antivirus utility. For good measure, also download and install the excellent and free 'Spyware Blaster" which automatically adds malicious sites to IE's block-list. Get it here and keep it updated: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

[F A B Scott]

Here's a couple more sites that you could use for reference; http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cl...stall.html#top http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348

edit; as above post.

[Ripshod]

Thanks for the help, folks.

I'll be buying a new Imac this weekend and I'm so happy that I'll not have to deal with MS anymore. I'm looking forward to it!

Jerry