Ponch

Everybody will tell you that a fresh install is better than an upgrade. Depending on your hardware and your ability (willingness) to upgrade it (MHz, RAM and HDD space), XP or 7 could be better. nLite is not for novices. So either you explain why you plan to use it or you leave us to reply in the mist.

It says "unallocated space", it's the sum of the unpartitioned space and the free space within in the extended partition. (125.22GB + 102.66GB) x 1024 = 233345 MB I don't see an other problem ? If you don't give the actual capacity, we can't see where it's "double".

"Not working" is quite a poor description of your problem. Try to update drivers from the manufacturer's site.

You can check this post. Mind you, it's for update 98 -> Windows 2000.

"Not partitioned" is a confusing expression as it could mean both "not divided" (means one big partition) and "unpartitioned" (means no partition). Because you have not partitioned the drive doesn't mean that there is no partition. First you should understand that there was at least one partition, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to use the drive at all (as drive E:). Also it is possible that there were other partitions created by the manufacturer that are not appearing in your Windows Explorer because they are not assigned a drive letter by the running OS (either after action from the user or because the file system on the partition is not recognized/supported by the OS). These partitions should still have been visible in Disk management before your problem. Maybe they still are and only your main partition has a problem. For the rest, you should choose Intel indeed. Then maybe you can change the type of the partition "1" to NTFS. Depending how important your data is, you might wait for confirmation before doing anything.

On a side note, performing a defrag on a pc that hangs is not the best idea.

I'd say checkdisk on all used partitions.

If this is after a .NET update, check this.

I agree with the 1st estimate. Because (for instance) a Gig of DDR2 RAM is more expansive than a Gig of DDR3 doesn't mean a computer from 8 years ago is worth more than a recent one. If you can sell the parts, do it, and quick, but for the "old" computer as is, ebay is flooded with cheap PCs with far better specs. The problem with that computer is that even fully upgraded, it is still 4 times slower than any 2nd hand PC from 2 years ago that you'd find for $250. Parts says good value but offer and demand says low value.

I'm pretty sure I moved a Dell Diagnostic partition to the end of a disk two years ago and it was still working. Also keep in mind that Dell keeps changing the way they arrange their stuffs.That PC had 4 primary partitions out of the box. Thank you Dell.

There is no mention of a Windows 7 here, and there are simple workaround for your well known fact, that's what the OP is asking about . Saying "I don't believe in dual boot because it scares me" is not helping much, is it ? There are lots of ways of dual booting two XP on a same HDD, the basic is to understand what you do at first. Maybe try on an other blank HDD with OS you can mistakenly loose. Then you'll see how you can get them back up. Not much is lost until you format the wrong partition. What I do is install both OSs, setting there own partition as active during install, then install Ranish Partition/Boot Manager that lets me choose at boot what partition becomes active and so what OS (always on C:) is booted. One C: becomes E: in the alternative scenario. My data partition (logical) remains D: in both cases. I never had a problem that I couldn't fix in 2 minutes. Now Ranish is an old horse and I'm not sure how big a HDD it would support.

So can you compare both ini files and see if there are any difference ? And if not, and it still fails loading the new presets, that would be quite surprising.

I think I had that problem once loooong ago and I had read about it being caused by removed hardware drivers (LAN ???). Anyway, as I intended to use that very disc only once or twice and I had noticed that restarting the install when hanging was going OK, I never solved it.

It never says "an apart 300W PSU to run the video card". They don't want you to return the card so it's a big warning, with a margin included. I'd try. You'll see problems running the computer long before the PSU blows.

Works a treat Thanks. Credits to my friend Atolica here (I'm still right about Owner and Administrator being two different accounts before his workaround, which he doesn't seem to aknowledge)

This is what I suspect happens; -Normal install (Home or Pro) -> you create "Owner" or other "user" or whatever you choose, manually at OOBE, what MS sees as the good practice. -Unattended install; XP Home (or nLite ???) creates "Owner" automatically, wether or not OOBE is ticked to be skipped in nLite. I think Nuhi tried a workaround in nLite by adding a "New User" by default in XP Home only (you get a warning if you remove it but you can still go through), but indeed Microsoft adds its "Owner" anyway, even with "Skip OOBE" unticked. Hence my two solutions posted before. Edit... I just read -X-'s last post and I'm a bit confused. Are you sure it was XP home ?

Either -keep it that way and delete the "Owner" account after install, then your only account apart of the built in "Administrator"will autologin or -rename Administrator as "Owner" in nLite, that will keep nLite from creating an "owner" account by default which I suspect it does as it is an obligation of XP Home to have an account aside the Administrator. nLite should at least show that account but it does not.

You are probably retrying and retrying with a same set of files. Or the attempt is not done with an original cd. Retry with the original and it should work. If you want to, load ONLY the Last session (rename last session_u.ini so it's not associated with the last session.ini). Owner you see is not the administrator, it's an account you added in a previous session but nLite doesn't show it as it is not supposed to be there (nLite assumes the source is MS original) and it is not in the _u file either. So the whole users thing fails. It's a known bug.

It is strange that nothing happens at all, even with the (new) "Preview in Firefox". Have you had that with various web pages or have you always tried with the same one ? It could also be that the file is downloaded in the background or that the opening of a new tab is blocked. As you have Windows, why don't you try the same pages in IE? It could show you if there is a problem with FF or with Adobe Acrobat 7 (which by the way is very different from "Acrobat Reader 9").

You can get winvblock from here also.

"2 x UDMA ATA133/100/66 Bus Master IDE ports". Would have been sad if a 2003 board didn't have that.

Yes you did.

If it resumed, you must have selected Hibernate instead of Sleep ( and instead of Shutdown). Sleep would not resume from a real loss of power. An other possibility is that you hit Sleep but turned the power off several minutes later so that the PC hibernated by itself after x minutes of being in Sleep mode. No damage if you saw "Resuming...".

@ Jaclaz; your 2nd link is bad or dead, hopefully this one works.

The manual on Dell's site doesn't show any such option. Bios menus tend to become overwhelming these days, just not on that model.