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I just bought a new motherboard and processor and I want to wipe my hard drive clean and do a fresh XP install with my new parts. What is the best way to do it? Should I wipe the drive first and then install the parts or should I just install the parts and boot up the machine with the XP CD in and reinstall it? If I have to wipe it first what is the best way to do it? Thanks
the last part of the post is the answer.
just boot the hdd with the new parts, use xp to format.
use fat 32 for less problems down the road
xp was designed for the newer ntfs 5 version in mind, so when you reformat, choose to reformat in ntfs. If you play games, it won't crash as much or be prone to defragmentation. Also there's much more security in ntfs than fat32, plus the files are stored in much smaller disk clusters than fat32. I believe that fat32 does have some sort of storage limit as far as harddrive space goes.
When you reformat, leave the parts in because XP takes a snapshot of what components you have installed, otherwise it'll have you contact MS to reissue you a new activation key when you insert the other parts.