Xp woe is me

Ive always hated XP. I also should get some more experiance with it before its not the newest os everyone wants, because its been shipping for some time now and people need help with it.

So im trying to get a rig working with it.

Rig specs: 500mhz celly, 128 mb pc133, 250GB HDD (thats right, 250)

Okay. Ive updated the bios, the computer can use this drive.

XP, however, cant. i do not have sp1, so it can only see 127 GB.
The problem comes with using hte whole drive....

Ive installed sp1, and the rest of the drive becomes available....but i want it all in one chunk.
Partition magic says the drives were crated with different drive geometrty's, and they should be backed up and deleted immediately.

im tring a second, free drive manipulator in a few minuits.

I can now see a 128 GB partition, and a 104 GB partition.

The free demo seems to think it can do it, but it doesnt actually do it. GRAH.


My solution will be to install sp1 from the start. Only problem is, i cant do that without an sp1 disk, and im not buying another copy. is there a way to make a new xp cd with sp1 on it allready?




Also, XP has this annoying habit of sucking at life. sometimes, it absolutely refuses to see the wireless network. i just rebooted, and it found it almost immediately. whats up with that? i eded up downloading the entire sp1 on my laptop and burning it onto a cd to get it over there, and now it just...works. Whats up with that?

Your machine barely meets the MS recommended minimum specs to run XP...and I think those are absurdly low anyway.
I can't speak to the exact reasons for your drive/network problems, but even if those were solved your machine would still crawl.

Perhaps a total system upgrade is in order.

His celery rig is well above the minimum requiremets. I've ran XP on a 128MB PII 350MHz system with no problems whatsover.

Como- try slipstreaming. Check the sticky on the top of this forum and follow the instructions for slipstreaming SP2 into an XP CD. Then you can reformat and partition your hard drive and it should work fine. I have never tried this because I've never worked with large disks like yours, so you can be a guinea pig . I'm not sure if SP2 updates the windows install files or not...

Are both partitions NTFS?

Anyways, the first partition you create should be a 10-30GB system partition for you to install OS files and games to. You can install SP1 now also. Then you can create a second partition for DATA using up the rest of that big drive you have.

Splitting them up will allow you to slap w2k over XP when you get tired of it, without having to worry about all the data there.

fiels and games on a 500 mhz celly? all set with that...

basically when this rig is done, it wont do much...it wont brose the internet, and it wont get general usage. The only reason im using it over a p75 w/64 megs (which ive also put xp on) is because this was closer to my bed...in fact, the only time i got up was to get the hard drive off the porch when it arrived.

This is going to be a fileserver when all is said and done, but thats besides the point.

I tried to slipstream xp with a howto i found, ended up with a coaster and an hour of my life gone.
ill try the stickey one, diddnt know it was there.

I might split up the drives, it would probly be a good idea. Pribly 5 gig partition for XP...what a waste of space. Bloatware makes me mad....i should see how small i can make it while im at it

at this point all partitions are NTFS, as much as i hate that FS. oh well, its storage, cant argue.

oh, and as for slipstreaming sp2, im not. i dont want sp2, i want sp1. (i need 1 to get more than 127 gb to show up...stupid windows)

sp2 is a big popup as far as im concearned.

The reason i cant seem to get my slipstreamed one to work is that for SOME reason, i cant make a bootable cd....its me, ive tried with three burners and four typed of computers....just never ever works.

You need to slipstream a new Windows XP disk with SP1 on it.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp1_cd.htm


I did the same thing only with SP2. I also added a custom bootscreen, themes, logons, added programs and applications. I even customized the installation screen.

EDIT: Sorry should have read more. You made a SP1 disk that doesn't have the proper bootloader. Give me a PM and I can hook you up with the bootloader and a program I made to turn all the files into a bootable ISO.

problem solved. Thanks Chris!