Need some XP help, please.

I'm going over to my brothers place in the next couple of days and will attempt to fix his 'poota.
He has a P4 running XP with Nortons Internet Security...but he has 'trashed' Word, Powerpoint ect
but not I.E. He has all the legit' discs, so can i just disable Nortons Internet Security and re-install
XP? I'm a mac user so i just need a bit of advice about xp. Thanks.

Sanc'.

What do you mean, he trashed Office?

Originally posted by junglejake
What do you mean, he trashed Office?

junglejake, yup. Well it was actually my bro' and my sister in-law had a great idea that if they erased
office, the poota would operate faster. I explained that you can't do that, to which they replied,
"can you fix it?"

It's so slow for a p4, it takes about 4min' to boot. Should i just re-install?

Few things to try before doing the whole format and reinstall. You can remove office from a computer, but you should uninstall it, not delete it. More than likely, the computer boots so slowly because so many things in the registry are pointing to nothing. I would take the Office disk and either repair office, or if that doesn't work, reinstall into the same location, then uninstall, if you'd like it gone. You may also have to repair XP if it's acting goofy.

After that, I'd recomend getting spybot and do a spyware/adware check. It doesn't sound like they know computers very well, so I wouldn't recomend a firewall like ZoneAlarm, they tend to cause more problems than they fix if you're a novice user. (eeew, just noticed that huge barf emoticon has puke come out of its nose, too)

Be sure to, after you put Office back on there and do any XP repairs, to get Microsoft's updates for both products, too.

Since you're not too well versed on PCs, I would also recomend avoiding the registry completely and letting the software installers handle it. That's the one place where you can completely hose your computer even if you're pretty good with Windows. (My boss was in Norway doing a demo on some beta software we made and tried to "fix" the registry on one of their computers. I did not like that 2 am phone call...)

Thanks junglejake,
I think i'll just 'blow away' the whole HD and start from scratch.
And yes, they are not poota savvy. lol Anyhoo, they have all the discs, so i'll just re-install xp over the top of the current config'. And then Nortons ect. Thanks for the feedback.

Sanc'.

Be sure to do a repair or replacement when you redo XP, because I've had some people install an OS on top of another OS, and that really slows things down. If you format, tho, that won't be a problem.

If Im not mistaken you must disable norton, system restore and the windows antivirus all three to facilitate uninstall and reinstall of all the software , but note if documents remain from the programs that where made by them , then use caution when keeping those documents as they may infect the newly reinstalled program and send you back to point one.

Originally posted by sanctum
I'm going over to my brothers place in the next couple of days and will attempt to fix his 'poota.
He has a P4 running XP with Nortons Internet Security...but he has 'trashed' Word, Powerpoint ect
but not I.E. He has all the legit' discs, so can i just disable Nortons Internet Security and re-install
XP? I'm a mac user so i just need a bit of advice about xp. Thanks.

Sanc'.

good to see im not the only one with a brain i love my mac

First thing, FORGET MS OFFICE. It is useless and crapola. Have him download OpenOffice, its fricken great and its open-source.

www.openoffice.org...

It's features include a word processor with Thesaurus and Dictionary and MS Word compatibility.

It comes with Spreadsheet software as well as presantation software(think power point)

Forget IE as well have him download Firefox from www.mozilla.org...

Installing XP is easy allthough it doesn't give you many installing options as I am used too from Linux its pretty simple install. First thing when you install though is to Format everything(after backing up any info of course) and do it SLOW not QuickFormat. Also make sure his partitions are formatted to NTFS, much more effiencient filing system.

I will write up a step by step, hope it helps.

1. BACK UP ALL IRREPLACEABLE FILES -- That means any file that he/she cannot re-download of the net and needs for day-to-day stuff.

2. Place XP CD in Drive

3. Reboot and press either Del, F2 or F8 to enter the system bios(every Bios is different so some experimentation might be needed)

4. Change the boot sequence in the Bios so that the CD/DVD drive becomes Bootable, same thing as a bootable floopy

5. Once that is done Save Changes & Reboot with the XP CD in the Drive, it should automatically go to the XP setup screen.

6. Make sure to format all drives and convert to NTFS file format this step may take anywhere from 10 mintues to more then an hour depending on the Speed and Size of the drive

7. Follow the Instructions to complete install. From here on its very easy, you should not have any problems here.

8. Download OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox

9. Burn anything made by NORTON and make him/her take a lession in basic computer security. The best protection is education. I Never use Anti-Viral software, I just use computer common sense. Something that has to be learned but once learned is invaluable..

[edit on 7-2-2005 by sardion2000]

oh yeah by the way its probley a nortan problem i hate nortan scince i got rid of it i havnet had any problems and it didnt find virus that i had on my machine but avg found them www.avg.com