should I reinstall XP?

[Throbbing Angel]

hey hey

tosh laptop (a60-155)

Celeron D (I know ), 512mb RAM, mainly used for internetting and emailing and writing in word (novels & essays)

No heavy gaming or image manipulation

was bought preinstalled with XP home and a bunch of Toshiba related stuff to do with power management, easy config, etc

I have a OEM recovery disk thing that was received at purchase. The machine has become increasingly slow over the past 6-9 months, not grindingly slow, but enough to make me think 'fer fucks sake' when I click on something and it takes 2 to 5 seconds to react - which is annoying I find

Anyway

best option and why is what I want from you lot:

1) reinstall from OEM disk (assume this'd keep a lot of stuff like settings and stuff I have installed since purchase - or am I wrong on that?)
2) install XP pro from a copied disk I have knocking around (lose all settings as I would go for a clean install rather than upgrade as I want to 'start again' and speed up the machine)
3) other option that you see fit to suggest (not linux as a main OS as I have has power issues {ACPI is it?} with various flavours of linux and this lappy)

main intention is to speed it up AND not have to reinstall a load of stuff

I have performed a kind of back up by copying all images/documents I want to keep to an external drive and have also used the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard - will that be any use? (It's located in system tools if you want to look at it) I kinda hoped I would be able to install XP pro clean and use that files/setting output to keep my setup - do you think that's work???


all advice most welcome

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

reinstall from Tosh OEM disk would be my option - you can do that in under an hour just from booting from the CD. Having had nightmares trying to get the correct drivers for a current toshiba laptop a couple of weeks ago I would hesitate to use the vanilla XP disk and end up with loads of driver grief.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

cheers for the speedy comeback Sig

how much of a driver mare was it??
how old is your laptop?

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

NP

It was a portege M400 thats about 8 months old. Couldn't get half the drivers from their support website and had to go hunting around driverguide for ages. They seem to add little toshibaisms to standard drivers for reasons unknown. I really rate Tosh laptops though, just that I'd always used their OEM disk, it easier all round, I really doubt a vanilla XP install will speed things up any more than the OEM disk anyway

 

[Dubber Dan]

Bear in mind that if you use the Tosh cd it will wipe everything from the hard drive and will return it to the state when you first bought it.

The only things you'll need to installed then, is any additional software you've installed, configure internet, email, printers and copy over your backed up data. Oh then install all the Micro$oft updates and patches.

If you particlularly want XP Pro, I'd use the Tosh cd so you have all the drivers etc installed from that, then install XP Pro as an upgrade, then copy over your data, configure email, etc

 

[Throbbing Angel]

hmmm

interesting-looks like the OEM disk is the way to go huh
cheers

 

[Throbbing Angel]

right
I gave the product recover DVD a go andthis is how it went

fucking stupid toshiba
as their support forums or is it fora?) confirm
lot's of similar problems as I had
anyway - as was suggested - I recovered and now it is quite speedy this laptop



*goes off to fill hard drive up with cack again*

 

[Dubber Dan]

lol the joys of pc's!!!!

at least you're running now

 

[Throbbing Angel]

aye I s'pose
if only it'd run puppy linux properly.......sigh

anyhoo
have just discovered that I need to re-register ALL the palm software I have on my PDA as they all think they are trials again

that should keep me busy