It's about time to reinstall windows XP on my machine. It's been quite a few years since I got it, and thanks to all my experimenting, it's developed a lot of unwanted features since then. The trouble is, at the time I didn't know much at all about partitioning or anything, so my windows installation is rather integrated into all my files and programs on one hard drive.

How should I go about making a clean install of XP and how should I reclaim the space taken up by my current installation?

The obvious solution is to burn a few DVDs of backup, format the entire thing, and start over with some partitions in place, but I'd like to think there's an easier way. I'm terrified of losing any files. :-)

Hey gmt,

I can understand where your coming from. I always manage to forget something during my re-installs as well. To be honest, if it's a clean install your looking for, then the only way to do it is exactly how you suggested. If you require any help during the installation, you can go here: Windows XP Home install from CD

Alternatively, if you have enough space, you could perform a parallel install. All of your data and old Windows installation will still exist until you delete the files manually. There will be some files left over from shared folders. It's not the best approach if you want a clean install, but at least you'll have access to your old files. The only difference is that you install to your existing partition instead of formatting: Windows XP Home Parallel install

Meh. :-( No magic tricks for it then, eh? Darn. Maybe I can find a guide somewhere to help me thoroughly delete the abandoned Windows install.

If you go for the parallel installation you mean? I could write a guide for you if you like. It's not very hard, I can tell you everywhere you'll need to delete. You also have to edit the boot.ini to get rid of the first install (during a parallel installation, you'll have a menu at startup asking which windows installation you want to start with).

If you had something like Acronis and an external HDD or partition you could use, you could create an image of your current disk, but this is something that is costly and a little more time consuming. If your looking for a quick and easy solution of doing all this, then, no tricks today I'm afraid.

That sounds like exactly what I need to do. I'll do the parallel install, but I'll do it to one of my smaller secondary hard drives so backing up and reformatting will be easier in the future.
A list of what files to delete to clean up the previous Windows installation is what I'm lacking. If you can list them or tell me where to find a list, that'd be great. That and the boot-editing. :-)

Thanks so much!

OK, but it's probably not a good idea to do the following until your sure that there is nothing software wise that needs to be accessed from the first partition, such as your address book.

To get rid of the second menu when you startup.

- Open up notepad on your PC (go to Start, Run, type in notepad.exe).
- From there, open the file c:\boot.ini
- Remove the next line under [operating systems], and Save.
- Make sure the start of the following line after that matches what comes after default= a few lines above.
- If your unsure, cope and paste the contents here, and I'll edit out for you. If edited incorrectly, you won't be able to boot at all.

Because you now have two versions of Windows installed on your PC, you can't use duplicate folders, so the installation will create folders with the extentions .WINDOWS or .000. To be sure, before deleting, move them to a temporary folder somewhere else on the disk just incase. Reboot your PC, make sure everything is still working and then delete.

First of all, make sure you can see all your hidden folders within Explorer, go to Tools, Folder Options, View tab, and untick "Hide Extentions for known file types" and "Hide Protected Operating System files", and tick "Show hidden files and folders".

Delete/Move out the following folders:
- c:\documents and settings\All Users
- c:\documents and settings\Default User
- c:\documents and settings\Local Service
- c:\documents and settings\Network Service
- c:\windows

The c:\program files folder is shared between installs. You might want to interogate this folder, to see if there is any software in there, that your not using with your new installation.

That all looks good except for this paragraph:
Will the folders from the new installation be labeled that way, or will the folders from the previous install be renamed? After the install, whichever folders are the old ones ought to be moved to the temp folder. Do I have that right?

Would the folder extensions still happen if I directed the new installation to a different partition?

Very helpful post though, thank you so much! I'm looking forward to a snappy, fresh XP install.