1. ASSume that a fancy keyboard works when needed. Logitech Wave keyboards are useless between BIOS and Windows startup, can't even"hit any key" when the recovery disk needs to have you hit any key to select boot from CD/DVD drive. I was starting to doubt the CD worked, the CD drive worked, the other CD drive worked, or that I was understanding what "hit any key" means; always have a spare plain vanilla keyboard as a backup.
2. ASSume that a full re-install will write over the old data. After about two hours of wondering why the old windows and program debris were still there I clued into the need to delete the old partitions and repartition.
3. ASSume that the manufacturers recovery disk will load all the necessary drivers. It took an hour of no internet and messing with every internet and LAN menu I could find before I remebered to check the device manager and spotted the ? next to a whole bunch of stuff. What the manufacturer ommited is rectified by the Motherboard manufacturer's disk.
4. Forget to make a copy of internet favorites. Doh.
5. ASSUME clean install is clean. Installed XP, installed AVIRA and scanned (before ever connecting to the net, see #3) and get A0000090.EXE in the Windows directory; confirmed with very next program installed Malwarebytes: (Files Infected:
c:\system volume information\_restore{51411fda-e5d3-4ebb-a6b6-bb065ba33cc1}\RP4\A0000090.EXE (PUP.Tool) -> No action taken.)
Time to research A0000090.EXE; false positive or buried in the manufacturer's Recovery disk?
Speak up folks, I'm sure I'm not the only one....
Topic: Dumb things to do when re-installing XP.... (Read 1062 times)