XP Pro OS Rebuild - How to Guide
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After re-installing XP Pro and rebuilding my 51M many times due to a duff hard disk I have decided to compile a guide to what you need to do to re-install your drivers and OS from scratch. (if anyone has a better solution to any of the steps in this guide, let me know and I will edit this post).

1. If you download the latest AGP drivers and ATi drivers from AW and write them to CD.

2. Boot up from your OEM Windows XP CD. Delete the current partition and create a new one.

3. As the OEM XP Pro has its own install script just let it do it's thing before you start changing settings

4. If your version is the same as mine it will install XP to auto login to the Administrator account. You may want to change this so you can login using your own username. You will need to set the AutoAdminLogon = 0 in the registry. You will find it stored in the registry at

HKEY_LOCAL_machine\software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

If it auto logon is set the value will be AutoAdminLogon = 1. Change value to 0

5. Also in your System Properties
your PC maybe Registered to
My User Name
My Company Name

What you will need to do is edit the registry again. Use regedit and search for the string "Company Name" and you will able to edit your details as you need. You will find that you will need to change these values in 2 places in the registry.

6. Driver Install

- Install your AGP driver
- Install your ATi drivers
- I have found that the SiS drivers for the IDE controller actually cause the performance of the hard disk to decrease so I leave the standard XP drivers.
- Install GIGA LAN drivers
_ Install Wireless LAN driver. Ensure that you follow the setup instructions within the forum for these drivers
- Install all your other perphieral device drivers (Soundcard, PCMCIA, Modem etc)

7. Run the windows update to ensure all your security and patches are up to date.
8. Install latest version of direct X 9.0b
www.microsoft.com/directx


If you think any of these steps can be improved or if more info and detail is required then let me know and I will update this procedure list.