Restoring XP on an X30

[jamesb300]

I have an X30 with Windows XP installed which has problems with Internet Explorer - won't open a new window from a link, etc. Not an uncommon problem, but Microsoft's suggestions don't work and I need to reinstall XP. Not having had to do this before, is the best (maybe only) way to do this is with F11 at startup and then restore the whole system?

Does this process effectively wipe the whole disk including any other files I have on there as well? If so, I'll obviously have to backup all the other files first.

My X30 also has an application bundled with it called something like Rapid Restore from Xpoint. What exactly can I do with this that's different to pressing F11 at startup?

I've just bought a new 100GB hard drive so what I'm going to do is copy the existing drive to the new one using Acronis and then install the new one and attempt the recovery from there.

If you think I've missed something here, please let me know.

Thanks, James.

[Ken Fox]

I have an X30 with Windows XP installed which has problems with Internet Explorer - won't open a new window from a link, etc. Not an uncommon problem, but Microsoft's suggestions don't work and I need to reinstall XP.

I think you are getting ahead of yourself. If this is the only problem you are having why not try dealing with Internet explorer?

There is a new version of Internet explorer and possibly installing/upgrading to that will fix your problem. You could download Mozilla Firefox (a better browser for many people anyway) and use that to download IE7. You could uninstall Internet Explorer and then reinstall it (the newer version).

You could also do a google for "Ccleaner.exe" This is a registry cleaner and free. You can then run it (do a disk cleanup and also check for and fix "issues;" you may have to do this two or three times to get rid of all the junk. If your problem is some sort of registry error this will probably fix it.

I would do these things long before I'd consider an OS reinstall.

Assuming you can get the system fixed these ways then after that you can image the drive contents and put them on your new drive. I doubt you will need to reinstall Win XP from scratch.

[jamesb300]

I have an X30 with Windows XP installed which has problems with Internet Explorer - won't open a new window from a link, etc. Not an uncommon problem, but Microsoft's suggestions don't work and I need to reinstall XP.

I think you are getting ahead of yourself. If this is the only problem you are having why not try dealing with Internet explorer?

There is a new version of Internet explorer and possibly installing/upgrading to that will fix your problem. You could download Mozilla Firefox (a better browser for many people anyway) and use that to download IE7. You could uninstall Internet Explorer and then reinstall it (the newer version).

You could also do a google for "Ccleaner.exe" This is a registry cleaner and free. You can then run it (do a disk cleanup and also check for and fix "issues;" you may have to do this two or three times to get rid of all the junk. If your problem is some sort of registry error this will probably fix it.

I would do these things long before I'd consider an OS reinstall.

Assuming you can get the system fixed these ways then after that you can image the drive contents and put them on your new drive. I doubt you will need to reinstall Win XP from scratch.

Yeah, that's a good point Ken, but there are a few more things to it that I didn't mention. The problem is not exactly an IE6 only problem. The file search function has also packed up. Microsoft had some registry "fixes" on their support website, but none of them fixed it. I'll check out Ccleaner.exe though as I'm not familiar with it. With XP, IE6 is integrated with the OS so you can't just remove IE6 and reinstall. That was the reason I was looking at having to resort to restoring the OS. If I can fix it without, so much the better.

I had considered going to IE7 directly, but was a bit worried it would have the same problem, but could be worth a try.

Thanks, James.

[Ken Fox]

I had considered going to IE7 directly, but was a bit worried it would have the same problem, but could be worth a try.

Thanks, James.

I think you will get it fixed with ccleaner and an ie7 install. Let us know how this works.

[uberT]

Guys, isn't there a "repair" function when you go to Add/Remove for IE6? I'm pretty sure you get an option to repair IE6 when you attempt to remove it....