System Reinstall

[mrbnet]

I just received my new 7K100 100gb hard drive from NewEgg. I created some recovery discs because I want to start with a clean install. Is there another way to just install Windows from it without all the extras? Do I have to purchase a separate Windows CD?

Thanks, Ryan

[pksw]

I was able to backup my HPA from my 60 gig HDD on to my my new 120 gig HDD. Then I just ran "restore to factory" from the recovery menu in the BIOS. (Hit F11 shortly after booting).

The system then extracted a heap of ZIP files on to a FAT32 partition on my drive. It then wants to reboot.

At the next boot, I booted off a CDROM, went the C:\ and deleted the setup directories for the "extras" like Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0, IBM Java, the CD writing software, Norton Antivirus 2003 etc that are installed by default.

Rebooting again, WinXP is installed, and the partition converted to NTFS, but as it cannot find the setup files for these extra programs, I ended up with a nice and clean WinXP with all the relevant drivers installed.

If you do want to do this, read the threads about transferring the HPA on to your new drive. You'll probably need a USB external case to hook the new HDD up to, so you can transfer the HPA backup on to the new drive (i.e. you need to be able to access both HDDs at the same time, or copy the files via DVD).

Naturally I backed up the hard disk using Acronis after WINXP was installed, so I don't have to go thru the tedious process of doing this again.