Woes of the reinstaller

[sniff]

I'm sure there are a lot of people that this won't help at all, but hopefully it'll help someone. It's a list of pitfalls I had last night (re-install took 5 hours, rather than 90 mins):

Problem 1
I had problems with my SATA drive. In the previous install, I had an IDE drive, partitoned to Cwindows) and Deverything else) with the SATA drive Erecorded TV/DVD rips) and my dvd drive was F:. All pretty standard.

Except upon booting from the install CD, it thought the partitions were labelled C:, E: and D: respectively. Alarms bells should ring

After formatting and copying the files, the installer asked for disc 2 "Windows XP Professional SP2 disk". After insert said cd I got an error message like:

"The installer requires the 'asm' files on the cd .... please insert disc 2"

No amount of cd swapping, or trying all the letters of the alphabet helped!

Solution 1
Completely disconnect the SATA drive. No need to remove it from the case, just disconnect the data AND power cables. Start again.

Problem 2
Do not assume that windows will provide network ability for the onboard NIC.

I had a linux samba server waiting with all my drivers, backups etc etc, but couldn't talk to it, cause I couldn't talk to it.

Solution 2
Burn a cd/dvd with at least the chipset drivers.

Finally .....
Don't bother setting up Media Center before you have performed a windows update. For some reason the guide for Sky wasn't mapping correctly (all channels started from 1, rather than 101), and the IR blaster wasn't working.

Hope this helps someone (even if it's me the next time I re-install, because I've forgot it all )

[dejongj]

Interesting stuff...

Don't understand what the issue was with problem 1...Doing a clean install with reformat Windows setup shouldn't even be looking at your SATA drive...Don't understand why you partition you drive for just Windows and Everything else, but I guess that's a personal choice...Especially as you notice on the reinstall you have to reinstall everything on everything else anyway...But going back to the SATA drive issue, I think I would have just disabled the SATA interface in the BIOS instead of opening the case and disconnecting cables...Once windows is up and running then you can enable it again and it will ask for the drivers...
Another alternative is, as you run it in single disk mode anyway, XP setup recognises the SATA drive as long as you don't use the RAID options, which you don't need as you have a single drive....

Solution 2: Absolutely! Or just a floppy as those drivers are small anyway....I use a USB floppy drive during install as well for the SATA drivers....

[sniff]

Originally Posted by dejongj

Don't understand what the issue was with problem 1...Doing a clean install with reformat Windows setup shouldn't even be looking at your SATA drive

Exactly what I thought, I added the SATA drive post original install, and then jigged around with the Drive Management tool to re-order the drives, I'm assuming that's what did it.

Originally Posted by dejongj

...Don't understand why you partition you drive for just Windows and Everything else, but I guess that's a personal choice...

Sorry, by "everything else", I meant install files, other dvd-rips, work etc, not program installs. All the programs go to C.

The aim being that when I do re-install, I shouldn't need to copy everything back from the samba server, as they would all still be in D:. Unfortunately, due to the problems, and my state of mind, I wiped the whole drive, and re-partitioned, hence problem 2!

Originally Posted by dejongj

But going back to the SATA drive issue, I think I would have just disabled the SATA interface in the BIOS instead of opening the case and disconnecting cables...

Genius....again see state of mind comment above :-)

Originally Posted by dejongj

Another alternative is, as you run it in single disk mode anyway, XP setup recognises the SATA drive as long as you don't use the RAID options, which you don't need as you have a single drive....

It isn't RAIDed, the SATA was a new faster addition, allowing me to save recorded TV separately - incase the older IDE failed - or I had to re-install.
I think it also helps when I play games, and record tv at the same time.

Thanks for the response

[evolution400]

Originally Posted by sniff

I'm sure there are a lot of people that this won't help at all, but hopefully it'll help someone. It's a list of pitfalls I had last night (re-install took 5 hours, rather than 90 mins):

Problem 1
I had problems with my SATA drive. In the previous install, I had an IDE drive, partitoned to Cwindows) and Deverything else) with the SATA drive Erecorded TV/DVD rips) and my dvd drive was F:. All pretty standard.

Except upon booting from the install CD, it thought the partitions were labelled C:, E: and D: respectively. Alarms bells should ring

After formatting and copying the files, the installer asked for disc 2 "Windows XP Professional SP2 disk". After insert said cd I got an error message like:

"The installer requires the 'asm' files on the cd .... please insert disc 2"

No amount of cd swapping, or trying all the letters of the alphabet helped!

Solution 1
Completely disconnect the SATA drive. No need to remove it from the case, just disconnect the data AND power cables. Start again.

Problem 2
Do not assume that windows will provide network ability for the onboard NIC.

I had a linux samba server waiting with all my drivers, backups etc etc, but couldn't talk to it, cause I couldn't talk to it.

Solution 2
Burn a cd/dvd with at least the chipset drivers.

Finally .....
Don't bother setting up Media Center before you have performed a windows update. For some reason the guide for Sky wasn't mapping correctly (all channels started from 1, rather than 101), and the IR blaster wasn't working.

Hope this helps someone (even if it's me the next time I re-install, because I've forgot it all )

If your happy with your system get norton ghost or another disk cloning package and make a clone of your system drive to your DVDR drive you can then restore your PC in 30 mins from DVDR.
I do regular clones when I add a new bit of software or driver if it passes a trial period I upgraded from an IDE to SATA Raptor drive a while back and I just put in the DVDR restored the image to the Raptor drive and within 30 mins it was back up and running.