Can I use a recovery CD on a different PC?

[swee'pea99]

My home pooter's running awful slow, mostly (I believe) on account of all the crap it's gobbled up over the last five or six years. I may have to buy a new one, but as a first attempt to avoid the expense, I was thinking of saving the stuff I actually need, then doing a fresh instal, using a recovery (Win XP SP2) CD that came with my office PC. I can't see why this shouldn't work, but could I run into problems? (The home pooter has enough grunt - 1 Gb RAM etc.)

The only other thing is, there's another CD, which has all the drivers. Obviously this relates directly to the 'bits' in my work pc, so won't help much with my home one. Can I make a sort of equivalent, by going to Control Panel>system>hardware>(right-click)Properties for each device, then 'search' for the driver files and save them on a memory stick? Would that work? Is there a short cut?

All advice gratefully received.

 

[twowheelsgood]

Probably not, it's usually an "image" of the intended PC rather than a full re-install.

I gave some advice to Maz a while back telling you how to pretty much clena-up and old PC. Start with ccleaner (enable all options), run the clean-up, clean the registery. Disable everything on start-up and then re-enable over time only the things you notice are "missing" and actually need.

Finish off with a good defrag. Unless you have anything nasty on your machine that'll give you 95% of your performance back.

Should take an hour or so.

 

[ACS]

PM sent

 

[MickL]

You could run into problems because the CD its probably only meant for your Office PC in which it will only really run the PC it came with.

There are steps you can do to clean up the older PC,
First of go to your task bar (bar at the bottom) right click on it and then select task manager, How many processes do you have running ? 45 is ok 50+ some problems might occur. Which can be sorted but will need some details from you first. But follow these steps first and let me know who you got on.

1) Disk Space how much have you got ? this can when it gets close to full slow your PC down a lot.
2) Disk Clean up. Go to my computer. Right Click on your harddrive (more than likely C drive) then click on Properties.
There you should see a pie chart of the harddisk drive how full is it ? make a note click on disk clean up. This will remove all the gunk thats built up through web browsing old programs etc.
Then once this is completed then click on tools and Defragmentation and follow the steps this can and probably will take a while to complete.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks all. I'll try all the 'non-nuclear' options and see how I get on....then I might just take the plunge! I'll report back when I've wrecked it!

 

[fossyant]

I did all this stuff on my in-law's computer last weekend.....when the kids wrecked it - very close to binning the install..... CCleaned very deep, on all users, sorted out internet options, defragged, reloaded anti virus....took a fair few hours - just left it running....

 

[HJ]

The latest issue of PC World, in the shops now, has advice on how to speed up a slow PC...

 

[very-near]

Some PCs have a hidden sector on the hard drive. This is used to contain data which indentifies the PC as being for instance a 'packard bell'

If you try and use a packard bell recovery disk (usually Norton ghost) on a non packard bell hard drive, it will look for this sector, not find it and bomb out. This is to protect Microsoft from using the recovery disk on another pc and circumventing the licensing agreements.

Dell PC's don't have this hidden sector BTW

Get hold of partition magic, split the drive into two with the 2nd partition being big enough to take all your personal stuff, or back up onto either an external drive or memory stick, then recover it if you have the disks.

It is a bit of a pain, but none of these clean up progs really work as well as a clean install, and their installation usually slows the PCs even further.

If you really don't want to go down that road, use 'system configuration' in the start menu, accessories, system tools, 'system configuration' and disable the programs which are started at boot up and stay resident in memory in the background as they will zap the speed seriously.

 

[swee'pea99]

That's two messages now that sem to have suggested 'Disable everything on start-up and then re-enable over time only the things you notice are "missing" and actually need.'

I've used msconfig to stop thins like ofice tools and microsoft messenger startinmg up automatically, but I've always balked at unticking things I don't understand - .dll files in SYSTEM and stuff like that - for fear of stopping windows starting up at all. Can I really untick all the boxes in startup, and then see how it goes?

 

[very-near]

[quote name='swee'pea99']That's two messages now that sem to have suggested 'Disable everything on start-up and then re-enable over time only the things you notice are "missing" and actually need.'

I've used msconfig to stop thins like ofice tools and microsoft messenger startinmg up automatically, but I've always balked at unticking things I don't understand - .dll files in SYSTEM and stuff like that - for fear of stopping windows starting up at all. Can I really untick all the boxes in startup, and then see how it goes?[/QUOTE]

Do a system restore point before you start, and if it goes wrong, you will be back to square one.