So you need to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows XP, don't you? How wonderful that sounds! You shoulda bought a Mac. It Just Works.™ Nevertheless, I'm sure that you love your clunky, ugly, piece of Windows mediocre-ness. Most people get attached. It's okay... you don't need to feel bad (well, too bad anyways).
The first thing you should do is back up anything that's important: Video Game saves, DivX/MPEG-4 movie rips, browser bookmarks, porn, and MP3's from the Napster era. Once you've done that, make sure that you tell it that you love it, pet it, kiss it, and say goodbye in your own special way. It's best to do this now, because once we kill and resurrect it, it'll be an all-together different beast with a different temperament and personality.
Here is a small list of things that you'll need in order to perform this type of brain surgery on your computer.
Have you got everything that you need? Good. Let's begin.
Take a floppy, any floppy, and put it into your floppy drive. It doesn't matter which version of Windows you have (although I'm assuming you're currently running Windows XP which uses a retarded version of DOS 7.x). Go into "My Computer", and highlight the floppy drive. Right-click, and choose "Format".
You'll get a popup box with some settings for the format. Leave everything at default, except that you want to enable the option labelled "Create an MS-DOS startup disk". Go ahead and let it do it's thing. When it's done, go back into "My Computer" and double-click the floppy drive to open it up. Go up to the Tools menu and choose "Folder Options". Click the "View" tab, and choose to display all hidden files and folders. Just below that, uncheck the option that says to hide all protected operating system files. Click OK however many times you need to in order to get out of the dialog boxes. Select all of the files on the floppy disk, and delete them. No really, I'm serious. Delete all of the files by hand.
Next, download my Windows 98 boot disk files and unzip them. Copy all of the unzipped files onto the floppy. THESE are the files you'll want to use. It's a normal Windows 98 floppy, except it contains Microsoft SmartDrive from the Windows 98 CD, and a slightly modified autoexec.bat file.
There. Now you have a Windows 98 boot disk.
Make sure that you take all of the CD's, DVD's, and/or floppy disks out of your computer before you begin. Yes, even the boot disk and Windows XP CD. Done? Okay, now put the boot floppy into your computer's slot (heh, heh). Go ahead and say goodbye while you restart your computer. This might possibly be the very last time you ever see your computer in working condition.
Once the computer restarts, it should automatically try to boot from the floppy. If it doesn't, then you need to take a screwdriver and open up your computer. Unscrew all of the screws that you can find and throw them into the garbage disposal. Next, pull out all of the parts that are removable and put them in your toilet. Make sure to flush at least 17 or 18 times before putting everything back together again.
(Why is it that when people get stressed out and nervous about reformatting their C Drive, they always seem to lose their sense of humor? It's a shame, really.)
Now, assuming that your computer tries to boot from the floopy (floopy? floppy), it should only take a couple of minutes for your computer to boot up. If you are presented with the option to enable CD-ROM support or not, go ahead and choose the one that makes the most sense considering that the Windows XP CD is... a CD. If you can't figure that out, go ahead and ring your buzzer and Tommy will come back there and beat you with a tackhammer, because you are a retard.
Once you get to the A:\> prompt, go ahead and type:
A:\> format c:
First it'll ask you if you're sure. Then it'll ask you if you're really sure. Then it'll ask you if you're really, really sure. You may begin to question whether DOS second-guesses you more than your mother-in-law does. I've even heard some people begin to swear loudly at this point. Give it a few (sometimes several) minutes to completely reformat your C Drive. At this point, anything that wasn't backed up is officially lost forever in the annals (heh, heh) of hard drive history.
Once it's done, it'll ask you what "label" to give to the drive. Name it "Juanita" or "Alfredo" or "Francisco", or something else that's fun to say. At this point, you are done with phase one.
Go ahead and restart your computer. Go through the same junk as you did before, enabling CD-ROM support. Pay attention to where DOS tells you that your CD-ROM drive is. No, I don't mean in the backyard or still in your toilet, but rather the drive letter that it's assigned to. Take your genuine, paid-for, Microsoft Windows XP Professional CD and place it, ever-so-softly, into your CD drive. Then you want to close the drive. Give it a second or twelve to spin-up.
After you hear the CD whirring away inside the drive, and assuming that your CD Drive is the E Drive, type e:. After you do that, you should see something that looks like this:
A:\> e: Operating System not found. Hard Drive is dead. Video Card is fried. Your grandmother is pregnant. Press any key continue.
Do you see it? If you do then you either have a nasty virus (pregnant grandmothers?), or you need to get your head examined. Let's try this again.
A:\> e: E:\>
You'll want to change directory to the i386 directory (cd i386), then run the winnt.exe application (winnt). When you're done, you should see something like this:
A:\> e: E:\> cd i386 E:\i386> winnt
The DOS-based installer should now be running. Phase two is complete.
This is the part where I get a bit fuzzy. I don't remember off the top of my head what questions are asked, but I know that I know the right answers. You're just going to have to trust me at this point. This is the jist of what will happen and how to answer the questions.
Windows XP should now be installed. If something is messed up or broken, then I probably screwed up these directions. I'm not responsible for anything breaking just because you decided to be silly and listen to anything I've told you.
There are a few things that you'll need to do before you start installing all of your stuff again. The next step is to install Service Pack 2. SP2 includes all of the updates from and since SP1. After that's done, make a quick visit to Windows Update to make sure that you've got everything.
Then, you'll probably want to install various "essential" apps such as WinZip 9.0, Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media 10, Real Alternative, QuickTime, Flash and Shockwave, Java, Gaim, and Firefox.
At this point you can go ahead and install everything else that you need to install.
I think that's about it. Hopefully this works. Eventually, I'll have to re-write this when I'm actually sitting in front of a computer that I can install stuff on. Until then, don't put your computers guts into the toilet, and always remember to wipe after you poop.
The end.
Updated: 22 September 2004