Fixing Winsow XP problems. Try this!

[Mike Hawthorne]

Hi

Here is something that I have found works to get rid of those nagging problems that just won't seem to go away. Since I originally figured this out I have done it on several different computers running Windows XP with great success.

I did this the first time when I couldn't get rid of some errors even after doing a repair install. Even after several repair installs the computer just wouldn’t run right it was laggy and crashed to the blue screen at least once or twice a day.

I didn't want to do a full install and start all over I have a zillion programs installed so I gave this a try and it worked.

First clean up your computer, defrag, get rid of temp files, spyware and invalid registry entrees etc. Now you are ready to go.

Now create a new User ID.

Boot the computer into the new user ID and go into msconfig and turn off all the startup items and services that are not required at startup. This is pretty much everything.

Now reboot so you have as clean as possible an environment to start with.

Insert the Windows CD and start the repair install from within Windows and the new user ID.

This will not change any of the setting from your original user ID.

Once you have done the new Windows install you will have essentially a clean Windows installation it will pick up most of your software but not you personal setting etc.

The thing is that the original configuration is still available and all your data is safe.
You can switch back to the old ID at any time to get data that you need to transfer like address books etc.

After a couple of weeks when I was sure that everything was working perfectly and all the programs were up and running I deleted the original User ID.

This has worked really well for me. This still leaves some work to do but all my data was intact and most of my software still ran. Some of my Adobe software had to be reregistered etc. but my computer ran just like it was a fresh install.

Mike

[TwoRails]

Looks like a good way to go about it. Nice tip.