In a pickle!

Hi,
I have moved up from Windows 98 and thought that I had reformatted the HD properly, then installed XP Pro. All looked fine and dandy except no sound, not a twinkle. Pottering around in the settings I reckon I dug a bigger hole for myself and ended up reinstalling a couple of times. Now it is well in a mix. I would like to wipe the HD completely and start afresh. And I would dearly like to have some sound.
I cannot find an uninstall for Windows XP and not even DOS.Hope you can help me.
Thankyou.
Yvonne

 

XP comes on a bootable CD. Go into your bios and change the boot order to boot from CD. Save and exit.One time option to tell it it is OK to boot from the cd just click enter when it says any key. If your machine can't do that then go to Microsoft downloads and get the bootable floppy download for your XP, they have Home and Pro downloads. Have the XP CD in there also. You will need 5 floppies I think. XP is easy to install it takes little user input. When it reboots itself just let it do its thing.
Now when you get to the part of setup where it shows you the partitions choose to delete the one that has the OS on it already, if you have more than one partition. there are lots of tuturials to clean install here is one http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

 

After you do a clean XP install, you may have to reinstall your sound drivers. This is not a big deal, and XP will attempt to locate them for you automatically, or you can direct XP to look in a specified location. From the "system" in the control panel you can access the add hardware or the device manager. Individual settings can be first checked under "sounds ".

Before you do anything about your audio after your clean install reboot the computer and check all wires and cables. You may have inadvertently misplaced one, or one might have become dislodged.

Just insert your XP cd and when you get the warning that you are about to reformat a partition with an existing OS, ignore it and proceed.

A friendly reminder- posting with a specific subject title helps us remember what problem is where when we are trying to help someone. "Need Clean Install and Audio Back" would cue the people most likely to be able to help.

Post back if you have any questions or further problems. And please post back and tell us about your successful resolution to the problem, too!

Johanna

 

Thanks Maggie & Johanna.
The pc that I am having problems on is not yet online. It is my old pc which I am trying to hand over to my student daughter. My new pc is the one online with XP. Looks like I shall have to get the old one back online before I can do anything now. First thing seems to be to get the required updates, then taking your advice, attempt a clean install. I think that I went wrong with the partition last time. Now I am having trouble taking things off. (I definitely don't understand the partition things! I shall be back to let you know how I get on.
Thanks a lot.
Yvonne