PCbanter - View Single Post - Should I re-install XP Home?

**BillW50** · February 25th 14, 09:33 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

On 2/25/2014 2:41 PM, wrote:
I was given three free computers, which were going to be thrown away.
One had nothing inside the case, except the MB, so that one is only for
parts. Another one I'll be working on, after I get a hard drive for it.
The third one booted right up, and except for a bad CD drive, all the
hardware works fine. I replaced the CD drive.

The OS is XP Home Sp2. It was password protected, but I turned out the
password was the person's name, so I got past that, and immediately
removed the password, since I dont need or want a password.

Upon opening XP, I found it loaded with toolbars, and some idiot program
called Bear Share that kept popping up. It also contained a PCTools
program to scan for malware. I ran that, and found 1041 malware issues,
mostly from those toolbars and that Bear Share program. I let the
(outdated) program remove all malware, and then removed all the
toolbars, and that annoying Bear Share program.

Little by little, I've been going thru and removing all sorts of crappy
programs. An old version of Turbo tax, several large games, numerous
folders that contained programs that had missing .exe files, tons of
temp files, and so on......

When I got it, the 20G hard drive, had 2 partitions, with only 800 megs
available. I now have 15G available.

Anyhow, it's working just fine now, but because of all that malware, I
wonder if I should re-install the OS. I plan to upgrade to Sp3, but
wonder if it's worth it, considering the former condition of the malware
that was on it.

I do have a XP Home SP2 CD.

But that brings up another question. If I do re-install, is there any
way to save some file (which one), so I dont have to re-activate with
MS? I have the registration number and all of that, but I'm on dialup
internet and would prefer to avoid the hassle. Or, would it be better
to just reinstall over the top of what I have now?

XP is pretty new to me, so I'm not sure what to do. I mostly still use
Win98se.

One final question. I downloaded the SP3 upgrade from MS, at a WIFI
spot, the .exe version. But they did not specify if it's for XP Home,
or XP Pro. How do I know which one I got?

Thanks for all help!

- BTW, that Bear Share program was a real bitch to remove, but I finally
killed it, and then ran regedit, and removed every instance of it from
the registry. I assume that program was something used to pirate
illegal software. I'm just glad it's gone.....

Wow! You sound like you did a terrific job cleaning it up. Kudos!
Normally it isn't worth all of that trouble, with all of that mess it is
usually less trouble to install Windows fresh (grab the drivers first
though). And that is what I would do now. But don't get too excited
about XP SP3 yet. As some think that XP SP2 is the most stable. I have
both XP SP2 and SP3 machines and I tend to like SP2 better. But for
most, SP3 isn't too bad.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2