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Well I decided today would be the day I would attempt my clean install. I had every thing set up carefully, all my files sorted (and will be kept tidy from now on ) and before I would do a totally clean install, I thought I would try the system restore that came with the pc originally. The advent system restore. I found my backup disc but I thought I would try the one on the partition.

I did a wipe install thing, and everything went fine. It came to registering windows and the cd key that was shown was not mine, I have no idea if it just filled it with random letters or something, but I replaced them with the correct cd key that was on the back of my old case, clicked next and it was successful. So I now have basically a brand new install, with working windows media player and ie and everything running very quickly indeed! I am more than happy with the result, the only annoying thing is that had I of known it would of worked, I would of done this AGES ago.

On the whole though, a happy venney

I'm so happy that it worked for venney, much better than the other options.

Hi venney ,

Glad to see you got a tidy clean system just setup.

I would recommend you get the antivirus and firewall app installed as well on your PC since sooner or later, you are going to surf the internet, right?

For me, I am happy when I found my PC runs faster after clean install but that won't last long without the essential applications.

Thanks for sharing your happiness!
Happy New Year!
Bill

Hey, just to top up the info, before I did the clean install I spent a long time tidying files, and made a folder full of essential applications for the clean install on one of my other hard drives.

That included
Kaspersky anti-virus package (I researched how to move my key from old install into new)
Ati CCC
MOBO drivers
Soundcard Driver - I'm having a bit of problem with that atm
Mouse driver/application
firefox
winrar
tversity
kazaa lite codec pack
nero
speedfan
O&O defrag
And maybe a few others.

I did have a weird experience when installing sp3, after I installed it every time I tried to install any of my other stuff, it said windows installer was missing (or something to that affect).
I uninstalled sp3, did all the other windows updates I wanted, then sp3 and it seemed to work fine.

Thanks for your reply, happy new year to you too bill

You are welcomed venney,

I also got some XP sp3 experience to share.
The driver from SP2 will never work including the system chipset driver.
There is always a mark in device manager showing the driver not install even run the mainboard driver CD.

So I finally downloaded the SP3 driver for that sepcific device and it works, took me hour and 15 minutes. Used to doubt that the mainbaord is DOA originally.

Nice meeting you!
Cheers!
Bill