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Fusion
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 3149
Loc: Darlington UK
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I have been asked to format and reinstall Windows XP Home on a colleagues laptop which he has recently purchased against my advice considering the poor specifications.
It has a processor of less than 900GHZ, a HDD of 10GB, and its showing only 120MB of memory and assume the graphics card is utilizing the missing 8MB's.
The speed of the thing is as you would expect, even after reducing the msconfig/startup entries to a minimum and removing most of the programs installed and have told him not to spend anymore money on something that would take pride in his young daughters room for her to practice on!
The only discs he has been given apart from software are the an Application & Support CD which has Drivers and a few application tools along with a Medion Product Recovery CD which I can boot from and gone partially through the re-installation of windows.
I would prefer to wipe the HDD and start over but a little unsure when I'm asked about the partition side of the process and how to go about things.
I should add that he only wants it for internet access and have installed a Vodafone 3G datacard which works very well, but the laptop as a whole is very, very slow when I leave the included McAfee security suite on for protection and the whole machine grinds to an embarrassing crawl.
Uninstalling McAfee and installing AVG free antivirus allows it to run a little quicker and even bootup in around 4 minutes as against 7minutes but as soon as I install ZoneAlarm for the firewall protection, it crawls again.
At present it is using the Microsoft Firewall to speed things up and am fully aware of its inadequacies.
Any help much appreciated on the format side and appreciate the memory issue in my opinion is obviously the stumbling block.
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Paradox Images
Always ask the right question to the right person and always get the right answer!
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greysts
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 17425
Loc: Colchester
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Fusion
Can I assume that the Medion CD is the original that came with laptop? I ask because like you, I find it hard to believe that Medion produced it with such a low spec for an XP machine. As it's an OEM CD, if it isn't the one that came with the PC then at some stage the installation will fail.
Assuming it's OK, then at some point in the installation you will get a chance to delete the partition that currently holds XP. If there are any other partitions on the hard disk they should be deleted at the same time. When they're all gone the menu will ask you where you'd like to install your new copy of XP. Choose the empty partition, use it all and then just follow the prompts. It will ask you if you wish to format the partition as NTFS to which you will say yes and then it will reboot. Leave the CD in the drive and then you can install XP.
It's a fair bet that XP won't have all the drivers you will need for the laptop but they should be on the Drivers and Utilities CD. Obviously you will also need SP2 plus a whole pile of critical updates. You might to replace ZA with Version 5.5 of Sygate from here. It's a lot less intrusive and 5.5 is more stable than 5.6.
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Do you know that we're all in line for succession to the throne? Really?
Well, if forty-eight million, two hundred thousand, seven hundred and one people died I'd be Queen.
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Fusion
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 3149
Loc: Darlington UK
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Thanks Spencer
As I've spent a couple of hours before my original posting and a couple more after experimenting, I'm going to return the laptop to him with most of the programs removed and running with AVG free and your recommendation of using Sygate which seems to not hog the startup process as much as the free ZoneAlarm.
The Startup was a main concern of mine even though my colleague wouldn't know any better as he's never really used any sort of computer in his life let alone the internet side of things. He has a steep learning curve to over come, but I have installed all the adware/spyware/trojan protection he will need along with SP2, and I will show him how to update the databases within those programs.
If he chooses not to do this I'm not responsible for the inevitable outcome.
I'm sure I'll be getting a phone call or two regarding this, that and the other, but hey, my phone battery can run out at the most inconvenient times! 
Thanks again for the advice, and I will use it if necessary in the future, but after careful consideration, don't feel formatting will effect performance much due to the specifications of the laptop.
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Paradox Images
Always ask the right question to the right person and always get the right answer!
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greysts
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 17425
Loc: Colchester
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Probably a wise move, particularly if the Restore CD wasn't the right one or it was damaged in some way. As you say, running XP with that amount of ram will have it's own problems anyway and re-installing XP won't overcome that.
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Do you know that we're all in line for succession to the throne? Really?
Well, if forty-eight million, two hundred thousand, seven hundred and one people died I'd be Queen.
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